


(I'm Friends With The) Monster

by BetteNoire (WeAreWolves)



Series: The Murder Ballads [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Aliens, BAMF!Bucky, But also a manipulative little shit, Dinosaurs, Foggy Nelson is literally my favourite person, M/M, Mad Scientists, Natasha Is a Good Bro, People who should watch more Jeff Goldblum movies, Steve is awesome, sam is a good bro, unrepentant!Bucky
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-06-02 07:17:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 40,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6556975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeAreWolves/pseuds/BetteNoire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier's first mission with the Avengers is an accident. The second is deliberate, but kept secret. They get him into more trouble than anyone could possibly imagine, and he finally starts talking about his time with Hydra. In which Bucky and the Avengers fight dinosaurs, aliens, their own pasts, judgmental old white dudes, and a hell of a lot of mutual mistrust.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Across 110th Street

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Winter Soldier takes it upon himself to help the Avengers with rampaging dinosaurs in Central Park. It doesn't go well.

The first time the Winter Soldier worked with the Avengers, it was an accident. Which blossomed into a trainwreck.

Some genius who had clearly never seen a Jeff Goldblum movie in his life decided it would be an awesome idea to go to the Savage Land, implant a bunch of dinosaurs with mind-control chips, and then teleport them into Central Park. He didn't do it for money, or world domination, or even to make a statement about Manhattan's insane real-estate prices. As far as everyone could tell from the screed he left on his blog, it was just because he had gotten laid off from his job at Roxxon and smacked down by too many girls on OKCupid and so he wanted to see people scream and get hurt.

The one consolation is that it happened on a Monday. A day earlier, and the park would have been packed with families enjoying the late-spring weather. As it was, several dozen dinosaurs running around Central Park was taking everything the Avengers had to handle. The park still had a lot of civilians in it, civilians who were often too terrified, too cornered, or just too damn stupid to leave. Who Instagrams a dinosaur attack? A surprisingly large number of people, it turns out. (“Fucking tourists,” growled Tony.) And more dinosaurs came through the teleport every minute.

Steve had immediately split the team into having responsibility for various quadrants of the park, with the first priority getting civilians out and second, keeping dinosaurs in until Tony could reverse the teleporter and send the ancient lizards back to the Savage Land. “Tony, you take southside, near the teleport gate.”

“I'm taking north; I got family in Harlem,” said Sam, zooming up the park.

“Fine. Natasha, upper east side. Hawkeye, upper west. Thor, you're floating support. Bruce, help Tony. Don't Hulk up unless you have to; we need you on science. Team: don't kill unless you have to,” continued Steve, over the comms. “These animals aren't in their right mind now. Our job is to get the chips out and get them home. Tony will be in charge of directing park activity; I'm going after the scientist and won't be on comms unless there's an emergency.”

“Can't we just shut off the chips in their brains? Tony, you can't hack that?” yelled Sam.

“One, nobody uses the term 'hacking' any more except tragic lifestyle columnists. Two, I'm way more occupied trying to stop more dinosaurs coming in through this gate. Jarvis, any lead on the power source?”

“Working on it, sir.”

Natasha flips out of a tree onto the back of a charging triceratops, and yanks out the palm-sized chip in its skull. “They're less mad once the chip is out. I think it hurts them,” she said, slipping the bloody little device she'd extracted in one of her belt pouches.

“Triceratops are herbivores, they shouldn't be this angry,” said Sam.

“Yeah well hippos are the deadliest animals in Africa and they're herbivores! Vegetarians can be some grumpy motherfuckers,” added Clint as he shot an arrow through the wing of a pterodactyl.

“Stegosaurus on your six, Natasha! Another herbivore.”

“Sam,” Natasha purred, dismounting the now confused and relatively docile triceratops, “you're a massive dinosaur nerd, aren't you?”

“Um. Maybe.”

“That's okay,” Natasha said, and Sam could hear the smile through the comms. “It's adorable.”

Sam blushed so red he could feel it in the tips of his hair. There was an allosaurus headed around the reservoir towards a couple of joggers who were busy taking photos of it. Sam cut down hard, yelled “hold on!” and landed in front of the joggers, letting off a few rounds of 9mm at the allosaurus' legs. The dinosaur screamed and backed off, glaring at them.

His glare was no match for Sam's as he rounded on the two joggers, still clutching their phones. “So you thought you'd stand there and film the giant carnivore running at you?!” he said, in a voice that could curdle milk.

The joggers blushed and nodded.

“Get the _whole_ fuck on out of here _right now_ because next time imma figure it's just Darwin and you deserve it.”

The joggers ran.

“Hey everyone,” said Bruce. “I almost have this. I have to shut the gate down to reverse the wiring but we can start herding the dinosaurs back in-- oh, shit.”

“Need my help?” said Tony. Everyone could hear repulsor blasts as Tony tried to keep rampaging dinosaurs away from Fifth Avenue.

“Maybe. One last bunch coming through.” Bruce gulped audibly on the comms. “It's a herd of Tyrannosaurus Rex.”

Four giant red dinosaurs, all teeth and muscular legs, come pounding through the gate. Three are smaller, but there is a huge one, four stories tall, and they take one whiff of the artificially enriched hunting ground that is Central Park and they _surge_ northwards. The smaller ones split off left and right but the big one just heads due north like he's going to lose his reservation at Sylvia's if he doesn't get there in the next five minutes.

“Help! I need help!” says Sam, peeling off to flank the giant T.Rex. “Got the feeling my 9mms are just gonna make this thing madder, if he feels them at all.”

“We got this,” said Tony. “Two of the smaller tyrannosaurs are branching off West. Thor, give Hawkeye a hand then go help Natasha with the third one. Sam, Jarvis spotted a kid still hiding on the playground. You ned to deviate from the T-rex and go grab that kid before the pterodactyls do.”

“Tony, I am going to deal with this T-rex. My _mom_ lives in Harlem.”

“Negative, birdman. Pterodactyl has the kid. T.Rex has another few minutes before it leaves the park. You got a kid who's definitely gonna die, versus--”

“Okay. Got it. Going now.”

Sam flies up into the sun then dive-bombs the pterodactyl from above, firing a grappling hook at him and tearing a wing. The pterodactyl drops the little Latino boy he's holding and Sam weaves under the bird-lizard's talons, grabbing the kid about ten feet off the ground. The boy's eyes are wide and his mouth is that trapezoid shape of a small child who is utterly terrified. Poor little tyke couldn't be a day over three. “Ssh, ssh, it's okay,” said Sam, hugging the boy to his chest. “Everything's gonna be okay. Where's your mom and dad?”

The poor kid just shook and sobbed against his chest. Sam touched down outside the park, near a knot of police officers who were debating whether to go inside and face the dinosaurs. He retracted his wings and walked up to a female officer. “Hey, can you help this kid find his parents? He was in the upper east side playground. I gotta go back in there and kick dinosaur ass.”

The lady cop smiled, and crouched down to take the boy. “Go kick ass, Falcon. We got it from here.”

Sam took off again. “Jarvis, where's the big T.Rex now?”

“Heading towards 110th and Lenox, Mr Wilson.”

“Fuck. I see him. On my way.” Sam banked hard, cut through the corner of the park and sped towards where he saw the huge, scarred apex predator charging towards the park exit into Harlem. Charging towards the residential neighborhood where his mom lived. It was one thing to see fossils of tyrannosaurs, and of course CGI versions, but seeing, _smelling_ the real thing, huge and blind with rage at the chip in its head, all muscles, speed and teeth? It was terrifying. Four stories tall and with a mouth huge enoug to snap up a human in one gulp.

Sam flew down 110th street and banked to intercept the Tyrannosaur. To make his stand. There were cop cars lining the street, but the cops were all gone, either meeting somewhere else for co-ordination or just deciding that their pay grade didn't extend to giant dinosaurs. “Tony, I still need help. Send me Hulk or something. I can't--”

Then Sam realised someone else was already standing in the middle of 110th and Lenox.

A silhouette in black leather, RPG launcher slung casually over his shoulder, long knives at his hip.

And fuck, Sam didn't think he'd ever really be cool about seeing the Winter Soldier, whatever Cap said about him. It wasn't just the mask and the goggles, which made him look like some sort of muzzled animal, that creeped Sam out. Or the half-robot thing, though that was hella creepy too. It was the way he _stood_. What kind of person do you have to be to just stand there, emotionless and calm in the middle of the street, as _seven tons of prehistoric death lizard_ charges you?

Sam had been Air Force, came from a military family. He knew from soldiers. The thing about battle is you _never_ stop being scared. No soldier ever does. You just learn to deal with it. And all the freaky shit that had happened since he met Cap, all the weird battles with aliens and robots and giant helicarriers, it was just scary in new and different ways, but you _dealt_ with it. That's what courage was: being scared and going forwards anyway. And that's what nightmares and PTSD and all the other things were: outlets for all the fear you could never allow yourself to feel at the time.

But what the Winter Soldier had... it wasn't even _human_. It wasn't courage, because that would suggest he felt fear but was ignoring it. It wasn't fearlessness, because that hinted at recklessness where there was only calm calculation. He just went _through_ things, like nothing mattered except bringing down the target as quickly and efficiently as possible. And Cap had tried to explain how he wasn't that guy from DC any more, but as Sam looked at the figure now calmly prepping the Gustav for firing, it sure as hell still _looked_ like that guy.

“What. What is it. Talk to me, Sam.” Tony's voice in his ear was for once a welcome distraction.

“Okay, so we're good up here. Probably don't need the Hulk.”

The Winter Soldier looked up at him briefly, the blank glare of his goggles glinting in the sun, and made a small, dismissive motion with his hand, as if flicking away a piece of dust.

“Aaaand I've just been told I'm not needed either.” Sam settled on the roof of a nearby low-rise, reluctant to fuck up whatever plan the Winter Soldier had for dealing with the giant red dinosaur.

“Sam, Sam I am, son of Sam--” said Tony, trying to _annoy_ Sam into explaining.

“Winter Soldier's standing on 110th street with an RPG launcher and the same expression he had when he pulled me out of the sky in DC,” said Sam.

“Welp,” said Clint. “One brain-damaged dinosaur fighting another.”

“Clint.” Steve's voice crackled over the comms.

“Oh, hi, Cap. And what is the nature of your emergency?” Clint deadpanned.

“More like two apex predators having a turf war. I actually want to see this,” said Natasha.

“I kinda do too but good news, kids, Bruce and I reversed the gate so--” and Tony's headset starts blaring the Rawhide theme song, “--let's herd dinosaurs!”

The Winter Soldier made another small hand motion, indicating going west on 110th. A biker on an expensive, matte-black italian racing motorcycle nodded, and pulled out onto 110th. The biker shouted in a light Irish accent at any people on the street, _dinosaur coming through, get into your homes, get out of here_. The T.Rex was briefly distracted. The Soldier shouldered the RPG and fired.

“Okay, so he _did_ actually clear the way of civilians,” Sam said. “That's... unexpected.”

The T.Rex screamed in pain and fury as the RPG round hit him in the right shoulder, and the Soldier ran.

“Wow. He is _really_ fast. Cap, he faster than you? If you motherfuckers team up on me and he's all 'on your right' one day I will end you both, you know that, yeah? Oh _fuck_ he just ran up a fucking building. Just dug his metal hand into the brickwork and remind me _never_ to get this dude mad at me.”

The Soldier reaches the top of the building – it's one of the taller ones around, an old six-story brick apartment building – and reloads the RPG. He backs up a few steps, runs for the edge, leaps off, and--

“Oh, he's going to _punch_ the dinosaur.”

Sam watched as the Winter Soldier flew down at the T.Rex, metal fist cocked back for a blow, the Gustav slung over his back, and fuck if that crazy motherfucker didn't dodge in midair at the last minute as the T.Rex tried to bite him, and punch the dinosaur in the face.

“Update?” said Tony, _Rawhide_ still playing on his speakers.

“Dinosaur's _really_ mad. He's--”

The Soldier grabs onto the T.Rex and wraps his legs around its neck, anchoring himself, then rams his metal arm into the T.Rex's nearest eye socket and just rips out one of the dinosaur's eyeballs.

“Okay, this man's fighting style is officially certifiably insane.”

“Use your words, Sam,” said Natasha, rather breathless and accompanied by the sound of stampeding dinosaur footsteps.

The Soldier throws the eyeball over his shoulder down onto the street and the dinosaur is furious and in pain now and shaking his head around, trying to throw the Soldier off. But the Soldier hangs on, sticks the RPG launcher in the empty eye socket, and fires.

As he kicks off from the dinosaur's skull, micro-seconds before the blast, the dinosaur makes one last desperate wave of his head and smashes the Soldier against the brick wall of the building he jumped off.

Then the dinosaur's head explodes.

The Soldier's body falls. Sam doesn't even think, he's pararescue, goddamnit, this is what he does. He's in the air and thank fuck for all the straps of the Soldier's tac gear because Sam grabs him and hauls him upwards and he's really heavy, even heavier than Steve and he's unconscious--

No, he's--

Before Sam knows what's going on he's got 250 pounds of whip-fast, disoriented ghost-assassin twisting out of his grip and Sam feels thighs go round his waist and a metal hand brace against his collarbone and a flesh-and-blood fist heading towards his face and this is going to be _bad--_

\--The world explodes into a bright white flash of pain--

They both fall. Sam lands like a ragdoll, and as he passes out he realises he's broken an arm or near as dammit. Plus whatever that fist did to rearrange his face. Though the fact that he still has a face suggested that the Soldier pulled the punch.

The Soldier twists again in midair and lands on the roof of a cop car, walking down it.

The T.Rex's headless torso lies at the entrance to the park, nerves still quirking in the freshness of death.

The Soldier sees Sam on the ground and puts together what happened after he smacked his head on the building. Under the muzzle, his face grimaces. Hadn't meant for collateral damage. He can hear Tony over Sam's comm, shouting for a reply.

He leans down and picks up the comm. “Tony. Sam's unconscious. I'm holding down the top of the park. Nothing will cross 110th Street.”

“Who is this?” Tony asked.

“Who do you think?” said the Soldier, then turned off the comm.

Declan pulled up on the bike then, and took the M3, trading it for a case with a sniper rifle and ammo. The Soldier nodded, and said, “ Get out. I'll call you for extraction.” Declan saluted and headed back north towards the Bronx.

The Soldier picks up Sam's unconscious form, slings him over his right shoulder, and climbs up the building again... this time via the fire escape. He sets Sam down on the roof in a patch of sunshine, propping his head up. Then he quickly unpacks and sets up his sniper rifle, settling himself down on the edge of roof facing the park. It's a target-rich environment.

He's just sinking the last of a flock of pterodactyls when he hears a moan over his shoulder. He glances back at Sam, who is rubbing his face with his unhurt hand. “Sorry I broke your face,” he said. “Not a good idea to grab me when I'm disoriented.”

“Hey, man, I was just trying to help.”

“I know. I'm sorry.” The Soldier flicked a hand towards the duffel bag lying near Sam. “Can you pass me that box of ammo?”

Sam slid over the box then flicked his comm on. “Hey, everyone, I'm okay.”

“Do I need to come up there? Because I want to come up there,” said Tony.

“Might be a good idea. We don't have many options other than shooting the dinosaurs.”

“...We?” said Tony, aghast.

“If you or Thor can herd them... I can't fly. I'm out of commission,” said Sam. Then, to the Soldier, “We're trying not to kill them. Can you shoot the chips out of their heads?”

The mask and goggles effectively covered any expression the Soldier might have, but going by the way his head was tilted when he looked at Sam, he was 99% sure he just got “bitch, please” from the Winter Soldier.

A stegosaurus waddled towards the park entrance a few blocks down and Sam watched as the silver chip on his head exploded into powder. The stegosaurus shook its head, looked confused, and then ambled back into the park to munch on some tasty reeds.

“Now that? That was just showing off,” Sam said.

The Soldier just shrugged and lined up another shot.

Tony flashed up, a streak of gold and red, and hovered for a moment, glaring down at them. Sam pretended not to notice how the Soldier had subtlely shifted position, ready to aim up at Tony if needed, and glared back, mistrustful and hostile. “We're fine!” Sam said. “Totally fine. Everything is cool, Tony. Go herd dinosaurs.”

Tony glanced down at the corpse of the T.Rex, then back up at them, and zipped off towards the park.

Sam's comm crackled with Steve's voice. “I got the scientist. He was sitting in a suite at the Plaza. I'm bringing him to the centre of the park, where SHIELD will pick him up. Bruce, dinosaur status?”

“Almost all are back through the gate to the Savage Land with nothing more than a headache to remind them of their surprise New York vacation,” said Bruce. “Thor? Tony? Anything left?”

“Nope.”

“We have had good hunting, friends, but the forests are now bare of prey!”

“Taking that for a no, Thor.”

Sam looked over at the Soldier, who was utterly still, looking through the scope of his rifle. “Hey, Soldier. James. Thor says no more dinosaurs in the park. I think we're done.”

There are certain moments of your life you remember in slow motion. The Soldier pulling the trigger of his sniper rifle was one of them. The world just sorta... stopped, as a finger moved a quarter of an inch over a trigger, and then sped up again horribly afterwards. The shot rang out and a moment later there was screaming over the comms and as Sam tried to parse what was going on the Soldier just looked at him, said “Now we're done,” and flipped himself over the edge of the roof.

“The fuck just happened,” Tony yelled. “I have mad scientist brains all over my suit!”

“I think we can all figure out what just happened,” said Natasha, ice-calm.

 

 

* * *

 

 

SGR: Bucky we need to talk

 

SGR: Bucky

_(!) Not Delivered. Retry?_

 

SGR: BUCKY ANSWER ME

_(!) Not Delivered. Retry?_

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Well, that was a disaster.” Bruce slumped down in his seat at the debrief meeting, exhausted.

Steve stared out the window.

“Cap, you need to _control_ him,” growled Tony.

Steve sighed. “Tony, can you think about the ramifications of that statement for a moment? Control is precisely the issue here. Bucky's not going to let anyone control him, ever again. And he's going to be weird about things that involve non-consensual control, like the chips in those dinosaurs.”

“But the guy _surrendered_ ,” said Tony.

“So did Zola.” Steve traced his finger down the glass. “Most of his work on the Winter Soldier project came after he was with the US government.”

“It's the mind control thing, isn't it?” said Clint, quietly, in an unusually serious tone.

Steve nodded. “I don't think summary execution is... at all correct. I'm just saying I can see given Bucky's history how he doesn't have much faith in SHIELD not turning around and letting this guy experiment on humans.”

Bruce looked down at his hands. This discussion was a little too real for him.

“Come on, he got laid off from Roxxon,” said Tony. “By all rights he shouldn't even be experimenting on a Quarter Pounder. And Coulson would never--”

Natasha snorted with laughter. “Coulson would, and _has_.”

Steve looked around, his face earnest. “I didn't ask him to be there. I thought he was on a job. I didn't even know he was back.”

“Ah, I thought Markus Pechorin was a little too young to have a heart attack.” Natasha smiled, catlike. “I like to play 'guess who the Winter Soldier's killed'.”

“Well, I don't share the details or locations of Avengers missions with him, and he doesn't share details of his contracts with me, so I have no idea if you're right or not. I don't even know if he was in Russia.”

“Pechorin was in Shanghai.”

Tony groaned. “Look, Cap, you keep telling us how he isn't that guy any more. He clearly _is_ that fucking guy. Still. And maybe you need to be a little realistic and get your head out of whatever hot animal sex thing you have going with him and recognise that he is basically feral and still a massive problem. Because if you don't, one of these days it's going to be us versus him and you know it.”

Steve's lips pressed into a thin line. “Won't be us, Tony. It'll be you versus him. He's my friend.”

Tony rolled his eyes.

Sam put his hand up. “Look. For what it's worth, the guy still scares the shit out of me but he _did_ get civilians out of the way. And when I explained we were trying to not kill the dinosaurs, he swapped to just shooting the chips out of their heads.”

“Flashy bastard,” muttered Clint.

“Sam, he beat seven shades of shit out of you!” exclaimed Tony.

“No. He punched me once, after I grabbed him from behind when he was disoriented from a blow to the head. Startle reflex in a PTSD vet, _I get it_. And he pulled that punch, I'm sure of it. Look. I'm just saying, he's... he's getting there, okay?”

“Why Harlem?” said Natasha. “Why get involved at all?”

 _Because he lives in the South Bronx_ , thought Steve. He continued looking out the window so Natasha would be less likely to catch him in the half-truth he was about to utter. “We used to go to the Apollo a lot. Maybe he--”

The conference room door whooshed open and Pepper held up her tablet as she strode in on high heels, immaculate in a grey sheath dress. “We have a PR issue on our hands,” she said. “Apparently there are some very talented amateur photographers in Harlem.” She gestured, and a large image appeared across one wall. “Welcome to the front page of every newspaper tomorrow.”

The image was a photo of the Winter Soldier in midair, metal fist pulled back to punch, hair like a black flag in the wind, and the T-rex below him, opening its mouth to bite. It was a _fantastic_ photo.

“Except the _New York Times_ , they're running with this one.” Pepper flicked her hand and a second image appeared: the Winter Soldier, covered in dinosaur gore, walking down a police car. The dead T.Rex was in the background, and Sam's unconscious figure was in the foreground.

Tony sighed. “We contain about a hundred dinosaurs with zero civilian casualties and _nothing_. Psychopathic cyborg punches a T.Rex, gets on the front page.”

“We need to talk to him, Steve,” said Pepper, kindly. “Beyond the issue of the Avengers having to explain what he was doing on our operation, he's going to be the focus of a _lot_ of media attention. We can help with that. We have an entire division of this company,” and here, Pepper smiled a little, her eyes sliding to Tony, “who are _expert_ at keeping controversial figures out of the press.”

  
Steve looked away, shoving his hands in his pockets. “He's.. I don't know where he is. He's not answering me.”

Pepper put her hand on Steve's shoulder, a wordless reassurance that meant more than she would ever know.

Steve sighed. “I won't be at the press conference tomorrow, Pep. I don't think... I'll start a fight. I _want_ to start a fight. Someone will ask about Bucky and I can't lie right now. I'll just start yelling at them.”

Natasha stood up and looped an arm around Steve. “Maybe tonight some celebrity will do something stupid and the news cycle won't even be interested in us tomorrow. Meanwhile,” she said, squeezing Steve, “You and me. Dinner. Your place, where nobody can see us. I know the most wonderful French-Russian place that does take-away if you ask nicely and/or have threatened them in the past about their mob connections.”

“Say hi to Vanya from me!” said Clint.

“I think if there had been less saying hi to Vanya, I wouldn't have had to threaten them, Barton.”

“Last names? Rut-ro.” Clint's eyes widened in mock horror.

Natasha narrowed hers at Clint. “You and I will talk later. Come on, Rogers.”

 

* * *

 

As they got out of the cab in front of Steve's place with a giant bag of takeout and a bottle of wine, Natasha placed her hand on Steve's forearm. “I'm going to kiss you. Play along,” she whispered.

“Huh?” Steve said.

As Natasha leaned in, she explained. “Paparazzi in the red Honda Civic.” She snaked an arm around Steve's waist and cuddled up to him affectionately, brushing a kiss against the side of his mouth. A final squeeze, and somehow she had his keys in her hand and she stepped forwards to unlock the building's door.

Steve followed her in, glancing at the car across the street with the driver's side window rolled down as he turned to close the door behind them. Natasha was right, of course. A zoom lens glinted in the late-afternoon light.

“There. Now people will ask you intrusive, personal questions about me, rather than about James.” Natasha winked as the elevator opened. “You're much less likely to rant about me.”

Steve blushed. “In the right situation I'd definitely rant about you, Natasha. Just...”

“...not in that way. I know.”

Natasha unboxed three portions of beef stroganoff – one for her, two for Steve – and the garlic bread, and as she was sticking the stroganoff in the microwave, she looked over her shoulder to Steve and said, “For what it's worth, I would have been tempted to take that shot, too.”

Steve wiped his hand down his face. “I still think it was the wrong choice. Who are we to decide if someone can be rehabilitated or not? Think of how many people – good, honest citizens who believe in truth and justice and the American way – would take a shot at Bucky, if given the chance. And feel they were entirely justified due to his past actions. Even Sam thought he was someone that couldn't be saved.”

Natasha uncorked the wine. “Lucky for him, the chances of anyone getting an open shot on him are pretty much nil.” She passed a glass to Steve and as he started to react, she said, “God, Steve, _I know_. Just drink the wine. It tastes nice.”

“Tony's right, too,” Steve said, taking the glass. “This is going to explode if I can't get him to trust at least some of you, and vice versa.”

“Sam's a good start,” said Natasha. “He's another soldier. And Clint. He'll be weird about it at first but just get them down to the range together. It'll turn into a giant dick measuring contest over accuracy and then they'll be best friends and bore everyone stupid with sniper stories.”

Steve shook his head as the microwave bleeped. “Bucky won't go to the range with Clint. He doesn't want anyone to have a clear idea of how good he really is. He wouldn't even spar with me at the Tower because he thought you'd go through the footage of it with a fine-tooth comb.”

Natasha grinned as she passed Steve his plate. “He's right. I would have.”

“Holy shit, Natasha, this food is really good,” Steve gasped, around hot noodles and beef. He twirled some more noodles around his fork. “What about you, though?”

Natasha smiled a coy little smile. “Eventually, yes. But not at first. We're too similar. I'll work on it, though. I have some ideas.”

“Natasha, you're the best.”

“Pfft, no, I just want to find out how good he really is,” she said, and this was one of the many moments Steve couldn't really tell if she was joking.

“Presuming he comes back,” Steve sighed, getting that kicked-puppy look that annoyed the daylights out of Natasha.

Natasha leaned over and smacked Steve up the side of the head. “Don't be an idiot, Steve. It doesn't suit you.”

 

 

* * *

 

Ten days later, Steve comes home to Bucky sitting cross-legged on his kitchen counter, sporting an impressive array of fading bruises.

“Do I want to know?”

“Nah. You should see the other ten guys, though.”

Steve rolled his eyes and stepped forwards to wrap his arms around Bucky. He pressed a kiss into his hairline, and Bucky flinched, then he felt Bucky's arms come round him too.

“How's Sam?” asked Bucky, embarrassed.

“He's fine. Fractured his forearm but it's in a cast and healing. And you cracked a cheekbone too, but nothing permanent.”

“I'm so fucking sorry, Steve. I banged my head and then he grabbed me and I just-- when people touch me in the field it's never to _help_ me--”

“I know. It's okay. Sam knows, too.” Steve smiled. “But the price of beating up my friend is that you have to come to dinner with me and Sam.”

Predictably, Bucky stiffened. “I'm not a hero, Steve. I'm never going to be an Avenger. Don't want to be.”

“Bucky. You _are_ a hero. You've always been one.”

Bucky shoved Steve backwards, hard. “I will kick you out the fucking window, Rogers. Not joking. Drop it.”

Steve put his hands up. “Dammit, Buck. I am not trying to make you an Avenger. All I want is you to get to know a couple of my friends, and not because I'm trying to fix you or some bullshit because you're not broken--”

Bucky laughed, nasty and hollow. “You have no idea, Steve--”

“--shut up and let me finish, asshole. It's hard on me, okay? I run a team. And I've got you. And every time these two sides of my life cross over it's a giant shitshow and Christ, get over yourself and just eat some pizza with Sam and do it for me. You used to do things for me and I'm asking you to do one more.”

“That's _low_ , Rogers.”

Steve grinned. “Y'know all these saps here in the future think Captain America fights fair, right?”

“Jesus,” Bucky said, trying to suppress the laugh bubbling up inside him. “Fine, I'll have pizza with Sam. But you're buying.” Then he grew quiet, looking down into his lap, and started tracing patterns on the countertop with a metal index finger.

“What is it, Buck?”

“Y'know when I was surveilling Hydra in Chicago, they said... they said ever since I was in the public eye, they'd had a flood of volunteers for modification programmes. And... there was this guy, he had really bad implants, I could tell they were killing him. All hopped up on drugs to cut the pain and amp his system. His eyes were weeping blood and he looked at me right as I killed him and he said _you're my hero_. I can't deal with people wanting to be like me, Steve. _Nobody_ should want to be like me. And you have little kids buying Avengers toys and dressing up as you for Halloween and the thought of that makes me _sick_ \--”

Steve grabbed Bucky's metal hand and started rubbing little circles into the back of it with his thumbs. “Tony was an arms manufacturer. Bruce was experimented on by bad people. Natasha was an assassin--”

Bucky shook his head. “Not the same, Steve. Not to the same degree, and you know it.” He wrapped his flesh hand around the back of Steve's neck and dragged him close, until their foreheads were touching. “I like being a ghost. Respect my choice.” Then he added, “And in return I'll try to meet your friends.”

“Thank you. But, um... maybe not fight any more dinosaurs? Because since then all the souvenir shops are doing the bears again, this time with a little foil arm and a sniper rifle.”

Bucky flopped onto his back on the counter with a groan. “Christ, not the fucking bears again.”

Steve grinned and tweaked Bucky's side. “C'mon. Tony's really jealous of the bears.”

That gets Steve a quick grin, before Bucky frowns again. “Yeah but what sort of sicko makes a stuffed bear with a gun?”

“Pepper said she'd help. Stark Industries is really good at the PR and legal stuff. They do it for all the--”

Bucky waved a hand, dismissing the notion. “Nah. I'll sort it out on my own. Don't really want to be beholden to Tony.”

“Thanks for coming back, Buck,” Steve said, rubbing his hand over Bucky's thigh.

“Thanks for not yelling at me.”

 

 

* * *

 

The law firm was tiny, just a couple of rooms on the second floor of an old mixed-use brownstone. Bucky walked in and the receptionist, a pretty gal with pale skin and hair the colour of moonlight, glanced up at him and then did a sort of double-take.

“ _Hiiii,”_ she said, eyes going a bit wide as they flicked up and down him, taking in the immaculately tailored grey suit over his muscled body, and finishing at his sunglasses and slicked-back hair. Bucky realised he'd probably overdressed, and the firm didn't get many clients who looked like him. Oh well. At least it entertained the receptionist.

“Hi back,” he said, smiling. The receptionist blushed prettily. “I've got a 1pm appointment? Name's Makarov.”

“Okay, let me just tell--”

They were interrupted by a pudgy man in his late 20s, wearing a rumpled suit and longish blond hair in a ponytail, backing through the door with a drink tray in one hand and a big paper deli bag in the other. “Lunch is here!” the man called out.

Another voice came from behind one of the closed doors leading from the reception area. “Just stick mine in the kitchen. I have a meeting.”

“Okay,” the blond said, tucking the deli bag under an arm and wiggling something kind of green and frozen out of the drink tray before depositing it on the receptionist's desk. “Karen, one frozen list of meaningless made-up nouns--”

“Green tea and almond chai frappucino, Foggy. Saying it won't kill you.”

“I beg to differ,” said the pudgy blond, clearly put out.

Bucky took off his sunglasses and suppressed a smile. He'd almost thought he'd made a mistake when he saw how poky the lawyers' office was, but he was liking these people better and better.

The pudgy blond turned around and glanced up at him and his jaw dropped open. It was just about the least subtle reaction Bucky had ever seen and he had to fight even harder to not laugh.

“Hi. I just have to talk to my partner for a moment. He'll see you in a sec. Be right back.” Then he turned. “Matt! I'm bringing you your food _right now_.”

“Foggy, I said--”

“RIGHT NOW, MATT. COMING IN.” The one called Foggy bustled into the closed office; Bucky got a glimpse of red hair and red-tinted glasses inside.

“I'm sorry,” said the receptionist – Karen? “I'd offer you coffee but our machine is broken, and even when it wasn't I think the brew it made violated several articles of the Geneva Convention.”

“It's okay, I'm good,” said Bucky, sitting down in a chair bathed in the sunlight coming in from the windows behind Karen's desk.

From behind the closed door of the other room, Bucky could hear the two men whispering to each other.

“Matt, you know how you thought your 1pm was a Russian mobster? It's like so much worse. SO MUCH. I am about 99% sure that is Bucky Barnes out there aka the Winter Soldier and oh shit Matt what if he's here to kill you? What if Fisk hired him--”

“Foggy, calm down. I am reasonably sure if he is the Winter Soldier and he came here to kill us, he wouldn't just be sitting out there letting Karen make heart eyes at him and flipping through an old copy of _People_.”

_A lawyer who understands basic operational logic. Hooray._

_Also: receptionist status: heart eyes: check._

Foggy sighed. “If you say so, Matt.”

“Show him in, would you? And you can leave my coffee.”

“Oh, yeah. Sure.”

The door opened again and Foggy came out with only one cup left in his hand. Bucky couldn't help laughing at him and just shook his head as he stepped forwards.

Foggy's eyes widened as his whole body froze in fear. “You heard me,” he said in a tiny voice.

Bucky glided to his feet and walked past Foggy. As he passed the blond, he whispered, “Fisk's a cheapskate. He'd never pay my rate.”

“Great,” Foggy squeaked, flapping his free hand in the general direction of his own office. “I'll just-- um-- nice, dinosaur-punching, by the way.”

“Thanks.”

Bucky went in and shut the door behind him. He held a finger up to the red-headed lawyer and pointed to the door.

Behind it they could hear Foggy whisper, “Karen! KAREN!”. Bucky thought he could picture the nervous jazz hands that were happening at the same time. Then a rustling sound, like a newspaper being pulled out from the bottom of a pile. “This!” said Foggy, as there was the sound of a finger tapping the newspaper. “That! With Matt right now!”

“Ohmigod!” came the receptionist's whisper. “He's _really_ hot in real life.”

“KAREN!!!!” Foggy hissed. "When I tell you there's a super dangerous killer in our office your reaction should probably  _not_ be 'he has a nice ass'!"

Bucky finally sat down in the leather armchair opposite the lawyer's desk, and jerked his thumb towards the reception area. He spoke very quietly. “They're _hilarious_. How do you get anything done?”

The blind lawyer smiled. “Foggy's a tenacious and brilliant advocate, actually. And Karen is the best researcher I've ever met.” The lawyer then stood, and extended a hand in Bucky's direction. “Matt Murdock. Nice to meet you.”

Bucky shook it. The guy had a good grip. “James Barnes. Sorry for the little deception with the name. You know how it is.”

“I do,” said Matt. “Also it was totally worth it for their reaction. So. What can Nelson & Murdock do for you?”

Bucky crossed his legs and leaned back into the armchair. “I know this isn't your usual line of work, but... since the whole dinosaur thing, people have been mistaking me for a hero. You go down to the tourist shops on the park, there is all this shit with my image on it. T-shirts, posters, fucking little teddy bears with sniper rifles... they need to stop. I know what I am, and it's not something to glamourize, or sell to little kids. When I'm done with the people I fight, they don't go to jail. They go six feet under a preacher, in a closed casket.”

“I see. And you've not given your permission for any of this merchandise?”

“Oh fuck no.”

The lawyer's fingertips found a keyboard and he began tapping notes onto it. “Trademark and copyright enforcement isn't difficult work but it is labour-intensive, and time-consuming. It does get easier after a year or so, once you get a reputation for nailing infringement cases, but it's a lot of hours that first year.”

“My work pays extraordinarily well. I'm good for it.”

The lawyer smiled, almost bashfully. “Let me have a talk with Foggy. Like you said, it's not our usual line of work. And he may have reservations about taking you on as a client.”

“There could also be benefits to having me as a client.”

The lawyer's eyebrows rose, over his round glasses. “Oh?”

Bucky smiled. “If you ever get in a situation one night that's... beyond your control, well, I'm a useful person to know.”

A microexpression of panic flitted across the lawyer's face, and was smoothed out almost immediately. “What do you mean?” he said, too calmly.

“Exactly what you're afraid I mean,” Bucky growled. “I'm paranoid as fuck, Matt. I am literally a product of evil Nazi experimentation and since I left Hydra pretty much every other covert group in the world has either tried to recruit me or kill me. Sometimes both. What I'm saying is, I tailed you for a week before I made the appointment. Days _and_ nights.”

“That's impossible--”

“Yeah, well, that's what I do.” Bucky rose to his feet and moved silently to stand near the door, where he stilled himself, slowing his heartbeat and shifting into a sniper's hyperawareness.

The corner of Matt's mouth quirked. “Okay. I believe you. That's a neat trick.”

“Evil Nazis for the win,” smiled Bucky. “Talk it over with Foggy. If you decide no, there won't be any repurcussions. But I hope you say yes.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hub_gUmkEHU
> 
> I should be finishing my other series but my brain forced me to write 7.5k of Avengers vs Dinosaurs *shrugs*
> 
> Sylvia's is a moderately famous soul-food restaurant in Harlem. Wedges of red velvet cake as big as your head! YESSSSS. 
> 
> The Apollo is a truly legendary music venue in Harlem. Here at the Wolfhaus, we love Harlem a whole lot. 
> 
> The Carl Gustav / M3 / RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade) Launcher is a reloadable bazooka.
> 
> Makarov is the name of the standard-issue Soviet army and police pistol during the time Bucky would have been in the USSR.


	2. White Winter Hymnal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Yeah, so we missed one of the alien ships," said the frat-boy-looking kid, a guilty expression on his face. "We kinda think it crash-landed in Russia."
> 
> The green-skinned, fierce woman next to him narrowed her eyes at Natasha. “It's just one little alien ship. You can take care of it, right? Peter said you were Earth's mightiest heroes. Of course, Peter also wants me to call him Starlord.”
> 
> "Could one small ship with a dozen aliens really--" Tony's voice is disbelieving.
> 
> "Yes," said Thor. "That is more than enough to consume all life on Midgard."

The guy is handsome in a frat-boy sort of way, equal parts faux-suave and real clumsy. Natasha looks like she'd like to eat him with cream. Clint's not sure how he feels about this until a fiercely beautiful green-skinned woman appears behind the kid in the video feed and gives Natasha the sort of glare the redhead is all too accustomed to handing out but not used to receiving at all. Then Clint is just fine with it all, if mildly wishing he had popcorn.

“What's up, Quill?” Tony barks. “I ditched a board meeting for you.”

 _Tony, you'd ditch a board meeting for a rerun of MacGyver_ , thought Steve. It wasn't fair, or nice, to make the space guardian kid feel bad.

The kid blushes and looks down. “Um, first, it's _**Starlord**_ , and second, um, it's about these aliens we fought last week.”

“Friend Quill, do you mean the Xi'an'arth? They are space locusts; consumers of worlds,” said Thor, a slight tremor in his voice. “I had thought they had been banished to the Barren Quadrants long ago.”

“Apparently not!” said the kid, pressing his lips together.

“We took care of them,” said the green-skinned woman, narrowing her eyes at Natasha.

“Yeahhh, except for the one we missed,” said the kid.

“What?” said Thor, leaning forwards, his face pale.

Which made everyone else go pale, too. Thor going pale with worry was not a thing they'd ever seen before.

“It kinda might have crash-landed on Earth. Sorry!” said Peter Quill.

“Sorry?” said Tony, hard like a hammer blow.

“I'll send you the co-ordinates! I'm really sorry!” said Peter, his voice rising a register in abject apology.

The green-skinned gal leaned in again, arch and cold. “It's just one little alien ship. You can take care of it, right? Peter said you were Earth's mightiest heroes. Of course, Peter also wants me to call him Starlord.”

“It's my pirate name,” hissed Quill.

Tony sighed and cut off the transmission, then spun his swivel chair to face Thor. “Well?” he asked.

“They are... predators. All they do is eat and breed. They consume all flesh on a planet, then once it is used up, leave for the next one,” said Thor. “In all the nine realms, they are the most dangerous of species. It is why they were sent to the edges of known space.”

"Could one small ship with a dozen aliens really--" Tony's voice is disbelieving.

"Yes," said Thor. "That is more than enough to consume all life on Midgard." He looked up at the ceiling. "Friend Jarvis?"

The schematics that came up on the screens revealed the Xi'an'arth as olive-black, buglike creatures, all long legs and claws and a whiplike tail for injecting larval-stage aliens into other living beings, living hosts they would eventually eat their way out of. The aliens had long, domed heads with multiple sets of teeth. There was nothing extra on them, everything was made for forward, fast motion and consumption of prey. They were the ugliest things Steve had ever seen, and even the dry schematics caused him to shudder.

“So we have to stop them, and fast,” said Steve. “Tell me how, Thor.”

“They will increase exponentially. Speed is of the utmost essence--” Thor paused, and looked over at Natasha, pulling maps up in front of her via Jarvis' translucent screens.

“Tell me they didn't land near a city,” said Bruce.

“No. We got lucky. Siberia,” said Natasha.

“Great,” said Tony. “Why can't we get more detail on those maps? Jarvis, find better satellites.”

“I'm sorry, sir, but there aren't any.”

“Here are our problems,” said Natasha. “The aliens have no heat signature. And the area they crashed in... while it's fortunate that it's almost entirely uninhabited wasteland... have any of you seen the movie _Stalker_?”

Cue five blank faces.

“Steve, put it on your list. Tarkovsky. Masterpiece of Russian cinema,” explained Natasha. “The area they crashed in is an old Soviet denied area. Test sites both nuclear and conventional, laboratories and factories that although now abandoned, they still won't acknowledge today, prisons... it's the blackest of black areas. No real population. No satellite feeds. And very, very touchy politically, even now.”

“So great. We go in, find the aliens, kill them before they find a population centre, job done,” said Tony.

Clint spoke up. “The alien ship crashed down a day ago. Even if we leave today, it'll still be two more days before we get there. Um, hate to be a downer, but how are we going to track them? Three days lead on us in a season-- Tash, there's snow in Siberia right now, right?” It was November, but still.

Natasha rolled her eyes. “It's _**Siberia**_ , Clint.”

“I'm not seeing why this is hard. It's like any search and recovery mission. We mark out grid squares and overfly them until we find the targets,” said Sam. “Right?”

“You want a bunch of American superheroes to ostentatiously fly around Russia's most sensitive military black zone?” said Natasha, arching a perfect eyebrow.

  
Sam looked over at Tony. “But the Russians _want_ our help, right?”

Tony slouched in his chair. “Yeah, um, no, they don't. Say they can take care of it themselves.”

“RIP Earth, dead because it's 2016 and assholes still can't get over themselves and co-operate for the greater good,” sighed Sam.

“How'd you feel about a bunch of Russian superheroes demanding to fly over Los Alamos, looking for something that none of your own surveillance has picked up but they insist is there?” asked Natasha.

“Okay, that would definitely be weird and... yeah, I see your point,” replied Sam.

“So we go by land, and track the aliens the old-fashioned way,” said Steve.

“Yes,” said Tony, pointing at Steve in affirmation. Then his index finger traveled from Steve past Natasha to Clint. “Hawkguy, you got this?”

“Nope,” said Clint.

“But you're great with tracking,” said Tony, confused. "I have heard you say specifically, "I'm great at tracking".

“Sure. Half a day behind. Maybe a day, if the weather is clear and it hasn't rained. But three days behind? With a likelihood that there's been new snow covering their tracks? No can do.”

“Natasha... you're Russian. Didn't the Red Room train you to do this sort of thing?”

Natasha rolled her eyes again. “We were adorable ballerina-assassins trained in disguise, seduction, and urban combat situations. Please. Siberia doesn't have hair dryers. Why would I go there.”

Natasha glanced over at Steve. His lips were pressed together and he had that little wrinkle between his brows that happened when he was about to do or say something foolishly combative. She hooked her ankle around his before he could speak, then looked back up at Tony through her long and impeccably-mascara'd lashes.

“Tony, if the aliens had crash-landed at an ambassador's cocktail party in Rio and you wanted to slaughter them incognito, I would be your girl. But the Red Room would have never sent me on a mission like this.” Natasha paused for effect. This was turning out to be quite a fun day, between this and the blushing frat-boy space pirate.

“Long-range tracking and removal of high difficulty targets was not for Black Widows. No,” Natasha smirked. “Why would they use us, when they had a weapon tailor-made for that? And one who, by all accounts, knows Siberia very well,” she finished. Steve wondered, not for the first time, how much Natasha really knew about the Winter Soldier project.

Natasha leaned back in her chair, crossed her arms, and waited, watching Tony.

First he narrowed his eyes at her.

Then he pursed his lips.

Then she saw his eyes widen ever so slightly.

It had taken a good eight seconds. She'd stumped Tony Stark for eight seconds. This was a frabjuous day.

“You want to go hunting, Tony, get a hunting dog,” she winked. She felt Steve stiffen ever so slightly next to her; she knew he hated that term.

“Who is this hunter you speak of so cryptically, fair Natasha?” inquired Thor.

Tony exhaled noisily and turned away from the table. Natasha gazed around the room. Thor looked confused. Bruce gazed mildly into the middle distance. Sam had his head bowed and was rubbing the bridge of his nose, and possibly also his recently-healed cheekbone. Steve was looking down through his lashes at her with a fond and impressed look that suggested he'd owe her Starbucks for yet another month. Pssht, she told him she would help with his... situation.

“Okay, fine,” Tony said, whipping around. “Cap--”

“Miriam's number.” Steve cut Tony off, handing him a piece of paper. “His agent. You book him through her.”

Tony's face twisted. “You mean--”

Steve put both hands up and looked away. He was not getting in the middle of this. No way.

“We could put it to a vote,” said Natasha, ever so mild.

Tony made another huff of displeasure in her general direction.

 

* * *

 

The second time the Winter Soldier worked with the Avengers, it was deliberate.

 

* * *

 

“He's costing me a fuckton of money, and he's not even fucking at the rendezvous when he's supposed to be.” Tony kicked petulantly at a snowbank. It was ass o'clock in the morning, they were freezing their butts off in a pine forest in Siberia, in two feet of snow, on the trail of a pod of planet-killing aliens. And he couldn't fly or the Russians would lob missiles at them. This was looking to be the worst mission ever and baby, there was a _lot_ of competition for that title.

The wreckage of the ship was scattered throughout the clearing in front of them, and that was setting Tony off even more. It wasn't nice, comforting metal wreckage, full of lovely alien tech he could take apart and study and adapt to terrestrial uses. It was all bio-organic, puckered carapaces and veins of drying, semi-luminescent goo. Bio-organic tech was gross and wrong, mostly because it tended to attack you or invade your body at completely inopportune times.

All of this was bad: Not flying. Gross, bad tech. Sneaking around. The Russian winter. The distinct absence of the tracker they'd hired at phenomenal expense.

“Uh,” said Clint, glancing upwards into the pine tree above them.

A second later, the Winter Soldier landed gracefully and silently in front of the snowbank that Tony had so recently assaulted. He was dressed in arctic camo and had a long sniper's rifle slung over his back, and an axe at his hip. Tony thought idly that the Soldier in all white was actually somehow worse than in all black, because against the paleness of the arctic camo his eyes became even paler, even more crazy blue. Tony looked away, down to the axe strapped to his hip.

Tony wasn't cool with the axe. Not that he was cool with the knives or the guns probably also hidden all over his body, but the axe – a bit like the baseball bat that the Soldier had shown up with once – it was a little too... brutal. _Why does he have an axe_ , Tony's brain asked, going into a bit of a tailspin. _Does he literally have ambitions to be an axe murderer?_

“Still can't keep out of trees, can ya, Buck,” said Steve fondly.

The Soldier shrugged and flashed a lopsided grin, then stepped forwards to meet Steve. When they hugged, Tony tried not to notice how the Soldier brushed his lips right down Steve's jugular. Everything is fine. Everything would be fine.

“This is the hunter!” boomed Thor from astride a snowmobile, dismounting and jogging towards them.

Steve saw Bucky shift his stance out of the corner of his eye and put a hand on his friend. “Bucky, this is Thor. He's--”

Bucky elbowed him. “I know who Thor is, you punk.”

“Yes, but you looked like--”

“Currently trying to shut that part of my brain up, thanks for asking,” mumbled Bucky. Steve knew him better than anyone, knew things he kept from the rest of the world. Like how much of his head was basically a fight computer, constantly scanning for exit routes, potential weapons, ways to kill or disable anybody in the surrounding area. Such as the huge, long-haired blond in the cape currently striding towards them and thus sending Bucky's hackles up. Bucky's brain knew he was a nearly indestructible Asgardian prince and yeah, so far given available weapons, odds favoured going right for straight out no warning trying to sever his head with the axe. _Thanks, brain. Your important contributions have been noted._

Steve made a wary and subtle-for-Steve “don't approach” gesture and Thor stopped about five feet away from them, his eyes sweeping over Bucky. The guy was huge and overbearing and _shut up brain yeah I know_ but fundamentally seemed kind and without malice. His smile was warm. “I'm pleased to meet a fellow hunter, especially one who has brought such joy to Steven since his return!”

Natasha grinned and leaned against Clint. “Oh my god, they both blushed in unison,” she purred. “ _Please_ tell me you got a picture of that.”

“Babe, I never miss a shot,” smiled Clint as he palmed his phone. Then he planted a kiss on the top of her head, and pulled her parka hood back up to cover it.

“This is the best mission,” she sighed.

“Um... so, Thor, Bucky, Bucky, Thor,” said Steve, flailing only slightly.

Bucky hooked his left hand around Steve's waist, only partially to get it away from the weapons his brain was telling him to draw. “When I'm working, most people call me Soldier, but James is also fine.”

“The Xi'an'arth are worthy and clever opponents. Be careful, Soldier,” said Thor. “Their larval form, when they hide in their host species, is especially dangerous.”

“Yeah, I read your briefing. I'm hoping I'll be able to smell them, or hear the double heartbeat...”

“So,” said Tony, “You going to do your thing? Go sniff stuff, or whatever?”

“Already did,” said the Soldier. “Wanted to finish it before you all got here and muddled up all the scents.” He turned and pointed. “Initial direction is east-northeast.”

“Okay. Sam, Bruce, check and make sure nothing is dormant in the wreckage,” Steve ordered. Then looked back at Bucky. “How do you want to do this, Buck?” Steve asked.

The Soldier looked over the four heavy-duty snowmobiles the team were using, assessing the amount of noise they were likely to kick up. “I'll go on point. Between two and five miles ahead. I'll need a tracking chip so you can follow me, and my own separate comms channel because I, um, you all talk much more than I'm used to on missions. Good?”

“That's fine, Buck. You'll be on comms with Tony,” said Steve, weathering the unhappy looks that instantly got him from both Bucky and Tony. He dropped his voice to a whisper: “I can't have the two of us as a unit within the larger team. You only talking to me is a bad idea.”

Bucky huffed his grudging assent. He knew it was the right tactical call (Steve was almost always right on tactics); still didn't make it fun.

Tony was fishing in his pockets for StarkTech trackers. He handed two to the Soldier. “Just in case,” he said.

The Soldier nodded, tucking one into a pocket and reaching in his jacket to attach the other to his metal arm. “If I meet any aliens, you OK with me taking kill shots?”

“He should not face the Xi'an'arth alone, not en masse,” cautioned Thor.

“One or two, fine, but more than that, retreat and wait for backup,” said Steve.

“What about larval-stage aliens? You going to freak out if I suddenly pop a civilian?” Bucky looked right at Tony as he asked this.

Tony's face said _all signs point to yes_ , but Bucky waited for his mouth to catch up.

The assist came, surprisingly, from Natasha. “The Soldier is the most deliberate fighter I've ever seen. If he shoots a civilian in the chest, I am comfortable with assuming it's a valid shot.”

“Okay, team, let's get moving,” said Steve. “Five minutes, then we're out.”

Bucky leaned over and pulled a pack out of a snowbank. “Steve, can you take my stuff on the snowmobile? I can move faster without it.”

“Sure,” Steve said, reaching out to take the pack. It was heavy, and though it didn't clank or make noise, there was a lot of metal in it. He couldn't help but smile. “How many guns, Bucky?”

“Not as many as I wanted to bring,” came the response, in Bucky's _I am a paragon of innocence and virtue_ voice that Steve remembered all the way down in his bones, a regular end cap to their Brooklyn escapades, especially ones that involved accidental property damage. “I thought I'd have to carry all my kit. If I'd known about the snowmobiles, oh man...”

“Tony brought the plasma cannon. He's still mad at you, so pretend you don't know.”

Bucky bumped his shoulder and smiled a little private smile just for Steve. Then Steve felt gloved fingers pass across his own, flesh muffled by layers against the Russian cold, electric all the same. “I wish I could come with you,” Steve murmured.

“No. You'd be way too distracting,” Bucky whispered back. Then just as Steve had begun to blush, he mock-grumbled, “All that stopping and waiting for you to catch up.”

The hand that Steve whipped out to smack Bucky across the back of the head was almost too fast to see. Bucky blocked it and reached in to squeeze the really ticklish spot on the side of Steve's waist, but Steve dodged away and turned to--

“CHILDREN!” called Clint.

“Best. Mission,” whispered Natasha.

Bucky pushed Steve's shoulder affectionately and turned to cross the crash site, heading towards its eastern edge. “I'm going into mission head. I'll see you later, okay?”

Steve nodded, and watched as Bucky walked away, watched as his movements became smoother, more precise, how he almost seemed to become larger, broader, as he stopped suppressing the socially unacceptable parts of his head.

“I'm heading out. Tony, you reading me?” the Soldier asked.

Tony looked down at his watch. “Yeah. All clear.”

“Good. If there's nothing else--”

“Why do you have an axe?” blurted Tony.

The Soldier turned his pale blue eyes on Tony and looked at him like he thought Stark might be brain damaged. “We're in the middle of fucking Siberia. How else am I going to cut firewood?”

Thor guffawed.

The Soldier reached the edge of the crash site and, with a last glance back and a small salute, flowed into a fast, ground-eating, loping run, disappearing moments later among the pine trees. Nothing was left but the sound of the wind through the pine needles, and the little clanks and rustles of the Avengers' clothes and equipment.

Clint swung onto the back of Natasha's snowmobile, putting his hands on her tiny waist and his chin on her shoulder. “They were going to make me do that,” he said. “I support this new initiative of outsourcing the shitty jobs.”

Natasha glanced back at him, the furry hood of her parka tickling his cheek. “Be careful; the Soldier's a sniper too. They may outsource your entire role to him, especially as he doesn't break as easily as you do.”

“Pfft,” said Clint. “I'm a way better shot than him.”

Natasha only hummed noncommittally. She felt a warm glow of accomplishment as Clint tensed, a flicker of self-doubt passing through his body. Manipulating boys was so much fun.

“Bruce!” Steve called, as he swung onto the back of Sam's snowmobile. Bruce had been examining the remains of the alien ship, with a rare sort of excitement for him. “Bruce, let's go!” Steve repeated, after Banner had either ignored him or not heard him the first time.

“Sorry!” said Bruce, ambling over. “It's all bio-organic. Fascinating. I had to get samples--”

“Ugh, wrong-o, Science Bro,” grumbled Tony. At Steve's glance, he checked his watch. “Why am I not surprised,” he groaned in an even darker voice. “Tall, dark and scary is two miles out already. We're good to go.”

The four snowmobiles buzzed to life, and the Avengers took off into the indifferent, cold light of the Siberian morning.

 

* * *

 

Tony was bored. Siberia was borrrrring. Nothing but pine and larch forests, so ridiculously samey that he got irrationally excited by seeing a birch tree. Was there a variant of Stockholm Syndrome for being stuck in the middle of nowhere? Was Siberia Syndrome a thing? He made a note to ask Jarvis. Snowmobiles were supposed to be a lot more fun than this. The second to last time he was on a snowmobile it had involved Gstaad, supermodels, and copious amounts of booze and cocaine. The last time had been a downhill chase into Telluride with five AIM war-bots on his tail and a malfunctioning suit. Both times there had been a nice chalet and a warm fire waiting for him at the bottom of the hill. Now there was just more Siberia. They'd been on the move for five hours and it seemed like the sun was already going down and god, could they just find the aliens already?

He glanced down at his watch screen, to check where the Soldier was. Antisocial bastard had been silent on comms for all five hours, and Tony felt this was some sort of special hell Steve had devised just for him: not being able to chatter his nervous energy away to a receptive audience. ( _Not receptive; they don't like you; they just put up with you because of the money_ , said Tony's anxiety.) Then Tony noticed something peculiar: the Soldier had stopped.

A rough voice crackled over the comms: “Tony. There's a village.”

It paused, then added with precise emphasis, “There _was_ a village.”

“Hang tight. We'll be right there,” said Tony. He switched comms channels to the shared Avengers one. “Gang, we have a situation.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrQRS40OKNE
> 
> oh god yes yes I know I need to finish Number One With A Bullet, I totally have the next chapter 90% done and I swear it'll be up in the next two days
> 
> FYI this fic (Monster) is going to be a bit looser and more episodic than the previous two. This one's really just an excuse to tell a bunch of stories about various Avengers and about the Winter Soldier, so... yeah. There's a bit coming up where it basically turns into the Decameron for while.


	3. Cold Cold Ground

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aliens are met, and stories are told.

When Tony thought “village”, he thought of those cute places in the Lake District where old ladies solve mysteries on the BBC, or maybe Nantucket. Somewhere in New England that had lobster. Bar Harbor, that was a village. Where the Soldier led them, once they reached the edge of the large clearing surrounding it, didn't quite meet up to those expectations. Nope. It was more like a smelly collection of ramshackle stone huts on a hillside, surrounded by a tractor graveyard. And large, disturbing-looking patches of pink snow filled with bits of bone, fabric and hair. Yeah, no, this was some straight-up Miskatonic University Field Trip from Hell bullshit and Tony briefly regretted his impulsive offer to basically invade Russia on the down-low and solve their alien problem for them. Right now he just wanted to climb into an entire bathtub of vodka armed only with a straw and The Who's entire discography, and not come out until he couldn't remember his own name. But no. He'd gone and decided to be sober and even those horrible pink splotches in the snow that used to be people weren't worth giving up his three-year chip over.

The Soldier was twenty feet up a tree a short distance away, looking through the scope of his unnecessarily large sniper rifle ( _overcompensating, much?_ ) at the shitty, stinky collection of hovels that lay before them. He had his mask off, and looked like he'd wandered out of some fashion spread. Tony once again contemplated how much easier everything would be if the terrifying super-assassin wasn't also _ridiculously_ pretty. If the outside was as ugly as the inside. The bastard didn't even have the good grace to look tired, and Tony knew they'd covered at least 50 miles since their rendezvous at the alien ship's crash site that morning.

He cut the engine of the snowmobile and dismounted, kicking snow and stretching out the kinks in his back. The others were a minute or two behind – Tony was riding solo _(because nobody wants to ride with you_ , said Tony's anxiety) and had been out in front, navigating the best path to follow the Soldier as he tracked the aliens. “Can you just pretend to be tired?” Tony called out to the pale figure in arctic camo up in the tree.

“Why would I do that?” came the genuinely bemused expression from on high.

“Because your tracking pace is pretty much a normal person's full run, in deep snow, and I'm tired just thinking about how far you've covered so far today.” Tony thought for a moment. “Actually, how far can you run before you fall over?”

That got him a wry smirk, before the Soldier's face turned away to look through his scope again. “That's classified.”

Further discussion was drowned out by the rest of the Avengers arriving on their snowmobiles.

“Cap!” Tony called. “Pop quiz: how far can you run before you fall over?”

Steve had long since ceased to be confused by random questions from Tony, and so he just rubbed the back of his neck, thought for a moment and said, “I don't know. Why?”

“Ha!” Tony said, looking back up at the Soldier. “You don't know either, do you? You're just saying 'classified' because it makes you sound more badass.”

“I know exactly.” The Soldier dropped out of the tree and walked over, his expression blank. “Tony, you're an engineer. You're familiar with the principle of 'test until failure'”.

Sam groaned, as he got off the back of Steve's snowmobile. “Aaand surprising no-one, we're back again to the topic of 'Hydra are a fucked-up bunch of assholes'”.

The Soldier shrugged, slinging the sniper rifle over his shoulder and gravitating towards Steve. “It's useful information to know,” he said, his pale blue eyes skating across the snow, avoiding everyone else's face.

Steve bumped his shoulder. “What have we got, Buck?”

“Aliens. At least two. I've only seen one in the open, though. Civilians. It smells like death but there are some still alive, closed in one of the huts. I can hear them. And something else. Another smell, different...” The Soldier looked right at Steve, his face questioning. Bucky looking at him was still like being hit by a searchlight, even now, a year later. “Can you smell them? The aliens? Like... dirty motor oil, but with something fishy and acidic underneath.”

Steve realised they were downwind from the village. His brow furrowed. He could smell a lot of things and sure, one of them smelled like rotten, oily crab, but he couldn't pick that particular scent out and quantify it. “I... think so.”

Thor strode up. “How many?” he asked quietly. The Soldier held up two fingers, then added, “maybe more.” He pointed at the largest building, more of a longhouse than a hut. “Alien in there. And something else. Weird scent.” His finger moved to another hut, windowless and shut up tight. “Civilians locked in there.” Then further to the right: “The alien I saw was on that roof a few minutes ago.”

Thor's eyes moved to Steve, and he waited for instruction. His expression was still wary, concerned about the battle they were about to face, and that if nothing else pushed Steve to caution.

“Okay,” Steve said. “I'm on point, Tony you take right, Thor left. Natasha and Sam, you get ready to receive civilians once we clear them. Bruce, stand by on medical and send the Other Guy to bail us out if things go pear-shaped. Hawk, you're on overwatch. Bucky, you're on my six--”

“No.”

“What?” asked Steve, glaring at Bucky.

“No. Steve. Don't live in the past,” the Soldier said, his voice devoid of expression. “With me, you point me at something, I walk in solo, five to twenty minutes later I walk out covered in blood and it explodes. I haven't worked as part of a team since 1944. I can't. I've forgotten how.”

“Buck, yes you can. It'll come back. You kept the Commandos together through Hell. They _loved_ you--”

“Steve. I am _not that person_ any more. I can't do teamwork,” the Soldier said, a note of desperation creeping into his voice. He pointed, sudden, accusing, getting in Steve's space. “Ask _Sam_ about my awesome teamwork skills.”

“Hey, I'm not gonna--” said Sam, backing the hell out of _that_ discussion because NOPE NOPE gtg bye.

Steve stepped forwards, his face inches from Barnes', fists balled at his sides. “Bucky, with all due respect, I don't give a shit. I have one sniper who's broken four bones already this year and whose only Russian consists of phrases involving fucking or booze. I have another sniper who's virtually indestructable, speaks the local language like a native, and has a metal arm. And acid-spitting, planet-consuming aliens. Hawk stays on overwatch. You come with me. Those are your orders.”

The rest of the Avengers watched in fascinated horror as Captain America and the Winter Soldier glared at each other, the space between them painfully narrow, fists balled, muscles tensed for... something.

“Tell me these aren't the right tactics,” Steve hissed, tilting his head slightly. “I'm waiting.”

Bucky leaned forwards ever so slightly, narrowing the space between them to almost nothing at all. Half a minute ticked by, until he growled, low and angry, “I go on point. Nobody touches me.”

Steve's hand flashed out towards Bucky's chest and before anyone could figure out what was going on, they had both hands on the other, grabbing hard on parkas and uniform straps, twisting, shoving, the promise of immense force barely restrained hanging in the air like electricity before a storm. Steve pushed Bucky back a half step. “Not your team. Not your call,” Steve said, finality heavy in his voice. But the two super-soldiers continued to glare into each other's eyes like nobody else in the world existed. Bucky grunted as his left hand twisted the fistful of parka it had at Steve's abdomen and began to pull Steve towards him--

“You know, um, you can get pretty far in Russia only knowing vocab for sex and vodka, just sayin',” Clint said, clapping his hands. “Like seriously, I've done six missions here and nobody's-- _OW!_ Natasha, no, why are you punching me?!”

At the interruption, Steve and Bucky stepped apart, letting go and looking anywhere but at the other.

“Oh thank _god_ ,” Bruce sighed.

Sam put his fist down low for a covert bump from Clint. “Dude. Seriously. My retinas thank you. One more minute and I was sure they were gonna--”

“They can hear you,” said Natasha, _sotto voce_.

“--keep discussing tactics,” Sam finished, one shade paler than when he'd started.

“Epic recovery,” whispered Clint.

Steve cleared his throat. “Um. Tony, Thor. Standard wedge formation, Bucky, you're on slack,” Steve muttered. “Weapon up; we're going in two minutes.”

The Soldier flips Steve the bird and yanks his bag off a snowmobile, swapping the sniper rifle for an assault rifle/rocket launcher combo. He leans the sniper rifle and its ammo bag against a tree and flicks his eyes over to Clint. “If you need something with greater range, grab it,” he said.

“Didn't think you were the type who'd be down with other people touching your stuff,” said Clint.

The Soldier shrugged, tucking 40mm grenades into an ammo belt. “I'm not. I'm also not down with being covered by a weapon which last had tactical relevance at the Battle of Agincourt.”

Clint almost got annoyed before he saw the small smile curling at the edges of the Soldier's mouth. “Well, some of us can handle something a little more challenging than just spray and pray.”

“Pfft. In Soviet Russia there is no pray,” the Soldier retorted, playing up his Russian accent for all it was worth.

Clint grinned and was working out a good reply when-- “Fuck! Incoming--” yelled Natasha.

“Aw, alien, no,” moaned Clint, drawing his bow and firing.

In the end there was no wedge formation. Steve turned to see the 20' tall, black-green alien skittering towards them over the snow at about the pace of a speeding car and decided that the obvious response was to run right towards it with nothing other than a vibranium trash-can lid and an air of righteousness.

With a “Rogers, you fucking _idiot_ ,” the Soldier took off on Steve's heels, adding a bad attitude and half an armory to the party.

Tony was on the sidelines, yelling “c'mon, c'mon!” as his suit came online, unpacked itself, and assembled on him.

Arrows whirred over Steve and Bucky's heads like angry insects and rebounded off the alien's carapace, Clint testing and ranging in, until finally nailing the giant bug-creature in a join between exoskeleton plates. Steve skidded and raised his shield as a jet of greenish, luminescent acid blood spurted out.

Bucky shot an experimental burst of of bullets at the alien and wasn't surprised in the least to find out its carapace was also bulletproof, because God hates him and wants his life to be difficult.

The alien hissed in hunger and pain and whipped its tail around to stab under Steve's shield but Bucky got there first, kicking Steve's shield as hard as he could and sending Steve flying a good 30' away from the alien. “Steve, _civilians!”_ he yelled, grabbing the tail tip with his metal arm, his free hand going down to the axe at his side.

The next thing he knew he was _also_ flying in the air, whipped around at the end of the alien's tail, as the other end of the alien worked to come round and quite literally bite him in the ass. With all three concentric mouths, each of them dripping acid, and a barbed tongue that would give Gene Simmons nightmares for life.

This was a terrible job. Why did he take this job? Oh yeah. Steve.

Bucky twisted and swung the axe down, the first blow sharply angled, to pry up one of the tail's protectice carapace plates as he felt drops of acid start to sizzle on the back of his parka. This was definitely _not_ the way he wanted to die. He chopped the axe down twice more and then he was falling, the severed end of the alien's tail thrashing in his metal hand. FOOMF, into the snow, and he immediately tucked into a roll and flipped back to his feet, fully prepared to shove the alien's own tail down its throat with a grenade chaser.

But he didn't need to. The alien's corpse crashed down in front of him, a stone hammer sticking out of its cranium, and a Norse god of thunder holding on to the hammer and grinning from ear to ear. Then Thor winked at him.

“...Thanks,” Bucky stuttered, giving Thor a quick nod as he shut his expression down to blankness, hiding his confusion. Why did Thor help him? People didn't help him in the field. He took off to assist Steve with civilians. As he raced across the snow, he registered a flash of red and gold go past him, towards the largest hovel, the one where he'd scented the other alien(s). Stark was finally at the party, too. Fashionably late.

Steve turned as Bucky ducked under the low door of the hovel. “Oh thank God,” he sighed. “Talk to them, Buck,” he said, indicating the dozen or so terrified Siberian villagers cowering against the back wall of the hut, glaring at Steve suspiciously.

“I wanna know why the aliens haven't eaten 'em already,” Bucky murmured, pushing his way in past Steve. “Not like this hut would even slow 'em down.”

“Trying not to think about that right now,” said Steve quietly. “Don't like any of the reasons I can come up with.”

“Yeah. Go out and get Natalia and Sam on standby. If I send 'em outside, they're clean.”

Steve nodded, his eyes sad, and stepped back into the late afternoon light.

Bucky turned to the villagers and drew himself as much as he could in the low hut to his full height, pushing the left sleeve of his parka up to show his metal arm. He looked at the oldest of the villagers, who probably wasn't much beyond 55 but whose face was a network of lines and gums a graveyard of teeth, despite bright, watery-blue eyes. “<Do you know who I am?>” he asked calmly, in Russian, as he forced the plates on his arm to recalibrate.

“<They said you were dead!>” gasped the old man.

Bucky shrugged. “<You should know, grandfather. In the truth there is no news, and in the news, no truth.>”

The old man quickly and excitedly explained to the others that they were in the presence of an actual hero of the Soviet Republic, which he wasn't, not really, but in certain corners of the Siberian denied area many decades ago, legends had spread about the thing that was being trained at one of the local bases, the thing that hunted like a ghost in the woods with a rifle on its back and a red star on its shoulder.

“<Please, save us!>” wept a young woman, her long light-brown hair ragged around her face, fallen out from the neat braid it had been in.

Bucky shook his head. “<I've come to kill the monsters in your village,>” he said. “<My friends will keep you safe until we are finished. Give you food, and medical attention, and warmer clothes. You must trust them. Can you do this?>”

The villagers nodded.

“<Good. One at a time. You go out in the order I send you.>” He motioned the old man. “<Grandfather. You first.>”

The old man passed him. Clean. No double heartbeat, no oil/alien scent. Bucky put his hand on the man's back, guided him outside to Steve, and nodded. Then he beckoned the woman with the braid.

She staggered up to him, grey eyes wide with hope.

And he could hear, clear as day, the second heart parasiting in her chest. The faint, fast beat of the alien child feeding off her lungs.

“<Wait here,>” he said, directing her to the side. He beckoned the next.

Of the dozen, four had been used as feeding hosts for the alien spawn: a teenage boy, all long and gangly; the girl with the braid; a heavyset, soft-faced mother; and a barrel-chested man with freckles and small eyes. Once the other eight villagers were out, Bucky looked at them, milling uncomfortably, unwilling to meet anyone's eyes. They knew. Of course they knew. But hope is a motherfucker, and it'll lead you down every time.

He thought about how to kill then, and decided that... that this was not their fault, that their last thoughts should be happy. He stepped away from the door and angled his head. “<Out you go,>” he said, palming the 9mms in his thigh holsters as he moved. Steve outside in the sunlight being the hero, Bucky in the shadows tidying up. Funny how things didn't change.

The four villagers' smiles were blinding; the sheer _relief_ in them. All four rushed for the door. The shots, centre of mass, straight to the thin, tinny second heartbeat, took less than two seconds. Anyone not dead when they hit the ground would get a second shot in the head and as Bucky stepped forwards to do that, he saw that the mother had twisted and fallen on her back and her chest was splitting open, far more than the exit wound should have caused it to split and there was something olive-green and--.

\--it _screeched_. It screeched like a new baby, but it was all teeth and claws and tail and unfolded, it was over two feet across.

Or, enough to completely envelop Bucky's face and smother him.

...Were it not for the metal arm.

The thing kept screeching, wound almost double around Bucky's forearm, the parka sleeve dissolving where it came into contact with the alien spawn, and Bucky just _hammering_ it into the rock lintel of the hut, over and over, until it was just gobbets of flesh loosely strung toghether, no longer moving, no longer making sounds.

Bucky shuddered, a full-body shudder of disgust and horror, as he ran out into the weak sunlight. Tactical assessment: Steve was with the civilians. Thor was fighting another alien, and laughing. Neither needed assistance, and Bucky had a bad feeling in his gut why only four of the twelve civilians had been used as spawning hosts. He ran towards the longhouse.

In the shadowy interior of the longhouse was a scene out of the Apocalypse. A huge alien, paler than the others, screamed in fury and agony at Iron Man as she guarded the ovoid shapes that covered nearly every available part of the floor.

She was guarding _eggs_. The air reeked with the strange, coconut-like scent Bucky had sensed earlier, and he shoved his mask on his face so he could breathe, so he could deaden the overwhelming smells.

Tony was struggling, down under a pile of seething, screeching alien young. The young aliens were hatching from the eggs, pushing out of cross-shaped incisions on the eggs' apexes, and they had latched all over the suit. Bucky could hear the acid from the aliens' skin eat away at the armor; the screech from their claws and teeth as it scratched the metal. “You okay for a minute?,” Bucky said.

“Yeah,” said Tony, pulling alien spawn off his suit and crushing them. “You have your comms in, or are you just really good at ignoring Steve yelling at you?”

Bucky smiled under his mask. “No, and yes, in that order.”

As Tony muttered into his comm, another alien spawn popped out of its egg and flew at Bucky. He shot it in its soft underbelly, not even a conscious reaction, and smiled a nasty smile as it exploded. The newly-hatched aliens' carapaces hadn't hardened yet; they were considerably weaker (though just as evil) as the mature ones.

He pumped the M203, flipped his goggles down over his eyes, and started emptying grenades into the field of eggs.

Yeah, well, _that_ got the queen's attention.

She launched herself into the rafters above the flames and scuttled, lightning-fast, towards Bucky, hissing her rage out of her concentric mouths. He got off another two grenades – the hut basically a mass of fire at this point, stinking horribly of charred coconut and motor oil – before she was flying out of the black smoke onto him. Bucky was knocked onto his back on the dirt floor, M4/M203 skittering out of reach... not that it would have done any good against the alien.

He got his arm up fast enough to block her first bite, then dug his metal fingers in at the top of her throat, trying to crush it, or at least keep the mouths from connecting to anything other than vibranium plates. Her barbed tail hammered down into the dirt next to his right shoulder. He pulled his longest knife, flipped the grip, and stabbed downwards, slotting the thin blade in a gap between carapace plates and pinning the tail as best he could to the floor. If he was lucky, the alien would have to rip the end of its tail off in order to get free. Though, so far, this wasn't shaping up to be a lucky kind of day.

The alien pushed down further against Bucky's metal arm, and started detaching its mouths, each one extending outwards and downwards a good six inches, and teeth and acid and tongue from the narrowest and sharpest of the mouths got closer and closer to Bucky's face. He could feel the first drip of acid running down his mask.

He pawed for his axe; there was no room for a strong enough swing unless he got free of his current position. Didn't mean he wasn't going to try, though.

Then the alien yanked, her whole body convulsing, and her tail came free. The knife clattered away. Yeah, no, this day wasn't a lucky day at all. Acid sprayed from the tail wound over his parka, hissing through the insulated layers.

He could ask Tony for help, but--

No. If Tony wasn't up by now, something was critically wrong with the suit, and he wasn't getting up.

Bucky swung the axe blindly; the fight devolving rapidly from an actual fight to the savage and desperate moves of a cornered animal. The alien's teeth were inches from his face; it felt like he was sharing its breath: foetid, ancient and evil. Whatever he was crushing in its throat was having zero effect on it. He got in a couple good slashes with the axe in his right hand, one of which split a section of carapace, before the tail whipped down and wound itself around his leg.

There were ways out. His brain had given him at least three solid tactical ways to bring down the alien from this position, but all of them involved severe collateral damage to himself and that was not acceptable for this mission. His primary responsibility was tracking and he needed to be able to continue to do that or else these things would breed and spread across the world. And if Earth's Mightiest Heroes (Plus An Assassin) was having trouble bringing down three of them... they had to stop them now. He had to remain functional.

There was a fourth way out, but the odds were _bad_.

Fuck it. The odds were always bad.

He tensed, and then let go of the alien's throat, leveraging off the tail and twisting his body into the air, bending back and deliberately exposing his belly.

The alien's mouths arrowed down on it; the tail loosening slightly. Endgame.

Bucky now had two hands to swing the axe with, and as the alien came down, impossibly fast, to tear out his guts and consume them, he swung the axe into its mouths. It cleaved in, severing the first mouth, splitting the second, and embedding way back into the third mouth.

The momentum of the swing carried both of them back into the fiery mass of goo and egg shard deep into the longhouse. Bucky got up, shook himself and staggered out, vaguely aware that he was on fire. He took off his ammo belt holding his remaining 40mm grenades and threw it behind him into the fire. Everything was screaming, stinking.

He staggered over to Tony and kneeled down, pulling the remaining alien spawn off him and crushing them. “Talk to me, Tony.”

Tony's voice came through the suit, muffled. “Acid shorted out the suit. I'm stuck. Also, you know you're on fire, right?”

Bucky grunted, and said, “How do I get you out?” He held up his metal hand. “Just so happened I brought a can opener.”

“Roll me over. Manual override on the bottom of the lower back plate. Should be a little button that'll unlock the suit.”

Bucky bunched his muscles and hefted Iron Man onto his stomach. Then he swore as the hairs on the back of his neck prickled.

He looked over his shoulder. Rising out of the smoke and sparks was the alien mother, her cleft mouth weeping ichor and-- much as Bucky could read the expressions of alien insect-creatures-- her face determined to haul Bucky into whatever hereafter her species believed in with her.

The axe was too far away; on the other side of Iron Man.

Bucky grabbed a knife in each hand. This? This was _absolutely_ going to suck.

He could still track, even with acid damage to his hands and arms. It would be acceptable damage.

He twisted to meet his fate head-on--

But then a blur of red, white and blue flashed past his left side, embedding in the carapace break he'd made earlier with the axe.

 _Steve_.

Or, more accurately, Steve's shield.

The alien reared back as acid spurted from the wound. Bucky sheathed the knives and palmed his last grenade, leaping for the alien. He yanked Steve's shield out of the alien's torso with his left hand and flung it back in Steve's general direction, then shoved the grenade as deep as he could into the wound. Hydra had always boasted that his arm was pretty much indestructible. Guess we'll see if that meant acid-proof, too.

He kicked off and flipped out of the way before the grenade went off, landing next to Steve and Tony. Steve had taken over getting the broken Iron Man suit open and was helping a sweaty, rumpled, and very stressed-looking Tony out of it. “Shield,” Bucky grunted as the alien exploded.

Steve was already moving as Bucky spoke, and got the shield up in front of all of them. Between it and the defunct Iron Man suit, they were protected well enough from the flaming chunks of acid-weeping alien flesh splattering down around them.

Steve lowered his shield and grabbed Bucky hard with his free hand, pulling him outside. Bucky turned, eyes wild behind his goggles. “You're on fire, Buck. Take the parka off.”

Oh.

OH.

“Um, yeah. Hang on.” Bucky wiggled out of the parka, down to the ivory leather Arctic tac jacket.

Steve held up the parka, still sizzling with acid damage and with the back and left arm actively burning, and looked at him disapprovingly.

Bucky unclipped his mask and sighed. “Had other things to worry about. Thanks for the assist, by the way.”

The three of them walked back to the edge of the village, dirty, ash-smeared, and sweaty. Acrid smoke pluming behind them from the longhouse. Bucky was happy to see that Natasha and Sam had the villagers in warm coats and they were drinking something hot, which smelled from this distance like tea.

Natasha looked up and arched an eyebrow at the state of them, then motioned to the rest of the Avengers. Sam, Bruce, Thor and Natasha walked out and met them a short distance away from the villagers, everyone sombre at just how badly the fight had gone. Everyone quiet with the unspoken fear that they had just had their asses kicked nearly to kingdom come by the aliens' junior varsity squad, and next time, there would be at least three times as many aliens.

Bucky folded his arms and said what had been weighing on his mind: “We have the wrong weapons.”

“Too fucking right,” Tony sighed. “My repulsors just bounced off the alien's armour.”

Steve nodded and turned to Thor. “What did the Asgardians use when they fought this species?”

Thor just smiled and looked past Steve to Bucky. “What does our hunter friend think would be the _right_ weapons?”

Bucky huffed, his breath misting white in the freezing cold of the late November afternoon. His brain ran evaluations, probabilities. “Um. Spears. Long, heavy spears like were used for medieval boar-hunting, with a crossbar so the boar couldn't just run up the spear. Barbed. With an explosive that can be triggered in the head. Arrows with some sort of paralyzing or electric charge, that can stick, even if they land in the middle of a carapace plate,” he said, glancing over at Clint to catch the thumbs-up the archer threw him. Bucky looked back at Thor, his lips curling into a predatory smile. “And a really big fucking axe.”

“Also flamethrowers or lightweight plasma cannons for the members of the team that can't bench-press a truck,” Steve added.

“Thank you,” breathed Sam.

“We have all that, and more,” said Thor, beaming. “I will return to Asgard and meet you in the morning with the pick of our armory.” He raised an arm in farewell and strode off into the woods, crimson cape rippling behind him. “Heimdall?” he boomed, and then his thunder rolled.

Steve looked at Bucky. “How much daylight left?”

“Two hours, more or less.”

“You got it in you to keep tracking?”

Bucky nodded and handed Steve his assault rifle. He stretched his back, rolled his shoulders, and picked up his abandoned sniper rifle from where it still leaned against a pine tree.

“Buck. You would tell us if you were too tired to keep going, right?”

“Yeah, you big idiot, I would. But I'm fine for now.”

“Turn on your comm!” yelled Tony, as Bucky loped off into the trees.

 

* * *

 

Tony didn't know why he bothered telling the Soldier to turn on his comm. Not like the bastard said anything. Ninety more minutes of complete silence, and then Tony couldn't stand it any more.

“James. It's getting dark. Normal humans are tired and want to camp for night. We're going to pull over in the next clearing.”

“Copy. There's a good place to camp about two miles away. I'll circle over to it. Can you follow?,” came the rough voice back over the comms.

“Yep, can do. Does the good place happen to be a luxury hotel with a sauna?”

The dry sound that came over the comm might have been a laugh. “I wish. Any way to contact Thor or that Starlord kid and ask if the aliens have an attraction to radioactive isotopes, specifically uranium?”

“Whyyyy,” Tony whined.

“Because this mission could actually suck more,” the Soldier replied. _Ugh, don't be funny_ , Tony thought. _I can't hate you when you're funny_. “And I know this area.”

True to his word, in about 10 minutes the Soldier stopped moving on the tracking screen, and Tony moved their little snowmobile train towards his location.

They eventually come through the trees at the base of a pretty little valley, in front of a steep, rocky hillside rising about 100' more or less straight up above a small stream. _Okay, fresh water, that's a plus_ , Tony thinks. No sign of the Soldier, but Tony can see the gleam of his tracker stuck on a big rock about thirty feet up the rocky slope.

“James..?” Tony says into the comm.

“On my way. Tell Steve to go up to the rock where the tracker is, and push it aside.” The Soldier sounded out of breath, which, about fucking time, Tony thought.

Tony parked the snowmobile under some low trees and waved everyone else to pull in near him.

“Campsite?” Natasha asked.

“Where's Bucky?” Steve asked, because _oh god_ , Tony thought, _this is going to be an entire evening of those two uncomfortably eye-fucking each other_ and maybe he could just damn the consequences, pop into his spare suit, and fly off with Natasha to the nearest decent hotel so he wouldn't have to witness it. But Steve was still looking at him like a kicked puppy.

“Super Soviet Boyfriend say go up, push rock aside,” Tony said, putting on a fake Russian accent and pointing at the boulder with the tracker on it.

Steve nodded and soon found a narrow path up the cliff to the rock.

While Steve was climbing up, Tony whispered to Natasha, “If Supersoldier Boyfriend Club gets too gross, you wanna blow out of here to with me to the nearest hotel where there is real food and hair dryers and hot water and an actual bed?”

Natasha snorted. “Tempting. But they sort of fascinate me, so no.”

Sam raised his hand. “I'm down for bailing.”

“Good man, Sam,” said Tony.

“Oh, wow,” came Steve's voice from above them. He was looking into a cave entrance that had been hidden by the boulder and some small bramble bushes that had sprung up in the rocky soil.

Natasha shouldered her pack and bedroll and jogged up the path to see. Tony sighed and followed, though he knew he was only being petulant for show. A cave was going to be a damn sight warmer and dryer than camping on the snow in a clearing. But he was Tony Stark and had a reputation to uphold. “Is this a goat path? Am I going to die falling off this?” he grumbled. “If I die, I'm suing everyone.”

“Huh,” said Natasha at the cave entrance. Natasha looking mildly nonplussed was definitely cause for interest (if not all-out alarm). Tony climbed a little faster, until he reached the broad ledge in front of the cave entrance and could peek over her shoulder.

As caves go, Tony thought, this one was pretty nice. Dry and clean and... there was a fire pit and an old wooden chair and a Soviet army foot locker in the back and a bed platform made out of flat stones and--

“Hey,” said the Soldier, skittering down from the top of the hill with something large and furry over his shoulders. He pushed past them into the cave and then tossed it down. It was a dead reindeer, blood congealing around a neat bullet hole in its skull.

“James! You killed Rudolf,” said Tony, pressing the back of his hand to his forehead.

“Nah, this is definitely Donner,” said the Soldier. “Or, as we're going to refer to him now on, Dinner.”

“Ahem,” said Natasha, indicating the cave interior with her I Demand Answers face firmly in place.

“Why does the cave have furniture?” asked Bruce, coming in behind them.

“And how did we know this cave was even here?” said Sam.

Steve was already heading towards the back of the cave, towards the footlocker. “Bucky, why do you have a cave in Siberia?” he asked.

“Eh, long story,” the Soldier said, scuffing his boots on the cave's dirt floor.

Steve stopped and looked back at him, sharply. “We have all night, Buck.”

The Soldier sighed and pulled out a knife, flipping it over his fingers. “Someone collect some wood and get a fire going. Once I skin and gralloch the deer and get dinner started, I'll tell you the story.”

“Is it a happy story?” said Sam. “Because if it's another story that's basically like, Hydra are a bunch of assholes, I vote nah.”

“It's a happy story,” said the Soldier. “Don't have many, but this is one of them.”

 

* * *

 

Tony had to admit that venison a la Winter Soldier was far better than expected. The Soldier had pulled juniper berries and wild garlic out of a pocket, crushed them between his metal hand and a rock and rubbed the joints of meat with them. Then, roasted over the fire until they were black on the outside and pink on the inside. It beat the hell out of the MREs in the back of the snowmobiles. The Avengers (minus Thor, but plus extra assassin) were clustered around the fire, warm and dry and happy in the smoky cave, stomachs full of food and bottles of ice-cold stream water nearby. It was... almost pleasant, and Tony couldn't be the only one feeling heavy and sleepy in the warmth after their day of travelling and fighting. Clint and Natasha were definitely snoozy, curled up in each other. Sam had a hand on his stomach and a smile on his face. Bruce, who was vegetarian, was still awake and bright, but that's what you get for eating nothing but rabbit food, Tony thought. Only Steve was somewhat restless, his watch never faltering on the Soldier, who until then had been busied with the small tasks of making and distributing food to the people in his cave.

Steve was clearly gearing up to say something, pacing around the subject like an elderly lion who couldn't quite believe he could still bring down prey. Before Steve could say anything, however, Natasha opened one emerald eye. “Is it storytime yet?” she purred.

“Yeah, why not,” said the Soldier, easing himself down to settle near Steve. He was down to his combat trousers and an old 'Property of Hydra' t-shirt with a few holes in it which Tony felt were suspiciously like bullet holes. The skin underneath was whole and unscarred, of course, goddamn super-soldiers.

“Okay,” the Soldier began, settling an arm around Steve. “As promised, this is a happy story. It's 1952 and by this time I'm mostly me as I am now. Arm was kinda shitty but worked; I was stupid strong, I was fast, I could heal quickly. I mean, I could do most of that in a basic way after Azzano, but I could do it a lot more after Zola kept tweaking the formula and shooting me up with new versions. I was in Austria. Hydra still weren't sure what to do with me beyond letting me be Zola's personal pincushion, because honestly I think they kept just expecting me to die like all of Zola's other experimentals.”

“So they finally decide that I'm probably not going to die, and it would be nice to have an assassin. Now, this was pre-GPS and pre-satellite reconnaissance. If you wanted to kill people you were going on a general last known location, a grainy black and white photo and maybe some possession or known associates of theirs. Hydra want to be able to drop me in a city and have me track and find targets and execute them. Fine. They decide the way they want to accomplish this via amping up my senses even more, so I can basically track like an animal. They ask Zola to do this, and he's _thrilled_ , because it means they won't ask where are all the other super-soldiers his not-at-all-fatal-in-99.9%-of-cases serum is supposedly creating. Zola develops some stuff, and then just as he wants to start trials (which is code for shooting me up and seeing what happens) he's summoned to go off to SHIELD and do things for them. For Peggy, actually. I mean, she didn't know about him still working for Hydra then. He told her he had an elderly mother in Austria he had to visit a lot. So the morning he's supposed to leave he just brings all three variants of his new formula and injects me with all of them and it hurts like a motherfucker and I pass out screaming and he tells his assistants he's off to New York and to call him if I die.”

“Thought you said it was a happy story, Buck,” said Steve.

“It is. Stay with me,” said the Soldier. “Anyway, waking up again was... shitty. Everything was too much. Too bright, too loud, everything stank, Christ I felt like I could feel the fucking _air_. I basically huddle in a corner of my cell for a week. Zola's assistants figure out from this that the stuff worked, so Hydra decides I need to be trained in my new abilities. Which is Hydra code for 'let's dump him unarmed in a live-fire exercise so he either figures out on his own how to use his abilities, or gets shot a bunch of times.'”

“Whoa, still not happy in any way,” whispered Sam.

“Shut up, Sam,” hissed Natasha, her voice low and vicious.

The Soldier ignored them and continued: “They can't train me in Austria because someone might notice, so they pass me off to Hydra's Soviet division. I remember the face of the Soviet general when my base commander points at me and says, 'see that scrawny mess curled up shivering in a corrner of his cell and glaring at you? That's our supersoldier.' The general makes this face like he's regretting every life choice that has led to this moment.”

“They tranq me, strap me down and fly me to Siberia. So I go from the interior of a windowless base in the Austrian alps to the interior of a windowless plane, to the interior of a windowless base in Siberia. The only difference was the lighting fixtures in the Siberian base were... oddly art deco, like that speakeasy on Fulton that turned into a dancehall after repeal, Stevie what was that place called?”

“Oh, shit... what was the name of that place?” Steve said. “Uh... MacKenzie's?”

“Yeah, MacKenzie's Silver Cup. That was it. The base had lights like there. And there was a big red stripe down the hallway walls the colour of dried blood. I arrive there and all the usual new base crap happens, amplified by the fact that they think I'm German, I can only speak a few words of Russian, and for the Russians at that point, the sieges of Stalingrad and Leningrad, and the battle for Moscow, are still very fresh in their memory. Fathers, brothers died in those battles.”

Natasha snorted and shook her head. “Yeah, you're totally fucked. Sorry.”

“Yup,” the Soldier says, smiling more than someone should smile at a remark like that. “I should probably explain. I didn't have a name at that point. The Germans had just called me Soldier, but the Russians decide to call me Dog. They aren't very impressed by this scrawny part-robot mess supposedly being a supersoldier, so they get their base combat champion, let's call him Ivan, to come beat the shit out of me. Only problem is that although Ivan is huge, he is pretty damn slow so I have him down in three moves. Then I'm _really_ popular.”

Sam looks a little green.

“It's been a few weeks so German Hydra cables Soviet Hydra and asks how they're doing teaching me tracking and survival and the Russians cough and stutter and say, it's great, we're doing an escape and evasion exercise with him tomorrow. So they beat the living crap out of me, break my leg, like fully broken--” and the Soldier makes a motion with his hands to show halves of a bone completely separating, and Sam goes even greener. “Then they strip me into my underwear and dump me in a snowbank. It's late November, in Siberia. And they tell me, okay, worthless German dog, you have five minutes to run before ten of our best recon troops come find you and shoot you. And I'm lying in the snowbank as the truck goes away and I'm looking at the first bit of sky I've seen since falling off the damn train in 1945, and the sky is blue and the sun is out and I can see a tree, and it was just a shitty half-dead Siberian pine tree but it's my first tree in seven years and I was SO FUCKING HAPPY. I mean, I was in a stage where everything made me a bit hysterical anyway and maybe that was the point my sanity snapped for real as opposed to me faking it--”

“This is the worst story,” said Sam. “I'm going outside. Did we pack any alcohol? Natasha, tell me you brought vodka. Or nail polish remover. Fuck it. Anything.”

Natasha tossed Sam a flashlight. “Vodka in the left saddleback of the snowmobile. Don't trip, and stop interrupting.” Then she turned to the Soldier, her eyes bright with interest. “What happened next?”

“Bye!” said Sam, as he strode towards the cave entrance. “Please be done being horrible by the time I get back.”

The Soldier smiled at Natasha, slow and lazy. “They told me I'd 'win' if I stayed out for 24 hours without dying of hypothermia or being shot.”

“Oh god, I had to do that exercise too.” Natasha whispered.

“Did they break your bones first?” the Soldier sounded genuinely scandalised, like he was going to go back and pummel Hydra a little more than he already had, if they were breaking teenage girls' legs before exercises too.

“No.”

“Lightweight,” he snorted, but with relief in his voice.

Natasha stuck her tongue out at him, then asked, “Did you make it? The whole 24 hours?”

He held up three fingers to her, the German way, thumb-index-middle. “Three months. I stayed out for three months.”

“Uugh. They told us we'd never beat the record. Now I know why.”

The Soldier leaned back, onto Steve, who looked like he didn't know whether to cry or punch someone. “The cave was part of it. Siberian winter's no joke and I probably wouldn't have survived if I hadn't found this place. Of course, I also probably wouldn't have survived if they didn't regularly send strike teams out to catch me, which was basically an endless supply of new clothes and weapons. I captured a radio and every so often I'd call in and say, thanks for the RPG, assholes. Thanks for the warm coat and the ammo, motherfuckers. My Russian became good because I'd listen to the radio all night. You could get a couple stations... At the end of February they said, come back in, we reckon you're trained. When I came back they didn't call me German Dog any more. They started calling me the Winter Soldier.” The Soldier smiled and ducked his head, running his hands through his hair. “Yeah. This cave has my first happy memories since I died.”

Steve made a little hurt sound and put his arms around his boyfriend.

“How did you take out the original team?” Natasha asked, scooted forwards so close to the fire it was a surprise her eyelashes weren't singeing.

“It's embarrassing. It was a completely lame manoeuvre,” the Soldier said, blushing and avoiding her gaze.

“Tell me,” Natasha said.

The Soldier exhaled and looked at her. “I spent so long staring at the sky, I used up all my lead time. Not that I could run on that leg. I rolled as far into the ditch as I could, pulled a snowbank over me, and then grabbed their tail-gunner once their patrol line had gone past me. Once I had his gun, it was easy enough to take out the rest of the patrol. Then I had clothes and food and weapons, and some basic medical supplies.”

“Yeah, but did you have an unlimited supply of cupcakes?” asked Clint.

“No. Hell, if I did, you think I would have ever come back to Hydra?” laughed the Soldier.

“I got holed up in a bakery once for an entire month,” Clint said. He looked round at his teammates. “I've never told you about the Alaska mission, have I? Way up near the Arctic circle where the sun doesn't rise for an entire month in the dead of winter.”

“No,” Natasha said, her tone annoyed. “Was that even in the SHIELD infodump?”

Clint hummed, shaking his head no. "That was a Fury off-the-books special."

Sam came back in, three bottles clanking under his arm. “We done being awful yet?”

Clint smiled. “Nah. I'm just about to tell my vampire story,” he said.

“Okay,” Sam said, holding up a bottle of clear liquid. “In that case, this is my own personal vodka bottle. All y'all can share these other two.”

Tony reached into his pocket and gripped his three-year chip for all it was worth. This was going to be a long night. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmrGImjmUZk
> 
> Three-year chip: Alcoholics Anonymous unofficially uses a system of reward or commemorative coins as members spend longer and longer sober. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sobriety_coin
> 
> Miskatonic University is a fictional university in Arkham, MA in several HP Lovecraft stories. Staff and students often meet untimely ends while investigating alien or supernatural things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miskatonic_University
> 
> "In the truth there is no news, and in the news, no truth": old Soviet-era wordplay based on the official Party newspaper being called Pravda (Truth) and the Supreme Soviet newspaper (which covered foreign relations) being called Izvestia (News). 
> 
> Gralloch: a mostly Scots term for disembowling game, specifically deer. I don't actually know the American-English version of this, sorry.
> 
> As promised, this is a lot less plotty and more episodic than other fics in this series. Next chapter is just Avengers tellin' stories. And possibly Sam throwing up. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	4. My Mother The War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Steve Rogers listens to war stories, and gets what he wants twice.
> 
>    
>  _nb: please note rating change to Explicit. Things get sexy in this chapter._

Clint launched into his story about small-town Alaska, watching over a very bad Witness Protection Programme placement in the middle of winter when the sun didn't rise at all and a feral pack of vampires had come out of the darkness to pick off the townspeople one by one.

Bucky listened for a few minutes as he threw the last of the reindeer meat onto the fire to cook. Then slipped outside, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his trouser pocket as he stepped into the bitterly cold darkness beyond the cave mouth. Steve made his excuses and stepped out a few moments later. He found Bucky sitting with his legs dangling over the ledge the cave let out onto, staring into the Siberian night and smoking.

“You okay?” Steve asked, settling next to Bucky on the ledge.

“Yeah,” Bucky breathed, the edges of his mouth pulling into a smile. “This cave and I, we had some times.”

Steve bumped Bucky's shoulder with his own. “I want to hear all your stories. Everything I missed.”

Bucky looked at Steve, his face illuminated by the cigarette and the feeble light of the gibbous moon. “No, Steve, you really don't.”

“Okay, then. Fair point. Only the happy ones?”

“What about yours? You never told me what you were doing while Hydra was busy trying to turn my brain into oatmeal for running away.”

Steve sighed and lay back on the rock, looking up at the stars. There was no electric light for a hundred miles, and with the moon a faint crescent, every last star was on display. The sky was crowded with them, the Milky Way lit up like the 405 at rush hour. So many worlds; so many possibilities, and here they were. “I don't really have any happy stories from then. Mostly just tried to keep moving so I didn't have time to stop and think about how empty I felt.”

Bucky swung his legs around and lay down so his head was on Steve's chest. “Yeah. I know that one,” he said quietly.

They both watched the stars for a while, ignoring the cold, and Bucky lit another cigarette off the end of his first. Happy laughter came out of the cave, Clint having hit a part of his story where he'd unwittingly caused a series of disasters which somehow culminated in discovering the perfect way to fight off the vampires. _Only Clint_ , Steve thought fondly.

The scent of barbecuing meat wafted out. Bucky had thrown the rest of the meat on to cook and Steve's stomach grumbled.

Bucky laughed at the gurgling noise under his ear, and sat up. “Still hungry? Lemme--”

But Steve rested a hand on Bucky's bicep, long warm artist's fingers on hard muscle. “Buck... I... how much did you know, after Azzano? About...” Steve traced his hand down Bucky's arm. _About what you were turning into._

Bucky pressed his lips together, silent for a moment. Not a silence of refusal (Steve was fluent in Bucky's silences; nobody could say as much in the space between words as Bucky could), but a silence of choosing the right beginning.

“I didn't know. Not for a long time.” He drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around them, like a child. “The serum worked slowly, when there was no Vita-Ray machine to make the process instantaneous. But it was working, like bees in a hive. Bees under my skin. I needed... a lot more food. More even than you, I think, because of the way my body was transforming. I was starving, all the time, and I couldn't think straight because of it. You wouldn't believe how much starvation fucks up your head. Plus, I was fucked up from the torture and from some shit that went down in Italy and from... from it being bad enough pining after you when nobody else saw how great you were, but then you come back as a Greek god and everyone wanted a piece of you and I was just some scrawny, invisible fuckup. And everyone kept saying, Barnes is crazy, all up and down the line, Barnes should be sent home, he's crazy, he's cracked up with shellshock. Battle fatigue. Enough people say it, you start to believe it. Especially when you know there _is_ something wrong with you but you have no idea what.”

“I didn't think you were crazy,” Steve said. “The Howlies didn't think you were crazy.”

“No. The Howlies _knew_ I was crazy and followed me anyway, because I was the sort of crazy that was real good at killing Nazis. You...” Bucky sighed. “You figured whatever was going on with me was temporary and I'd go back to my old self, I dunno, when the war ended, or once we captured Zola. But I was never going back. My body was changing. I didn't realise at first, but it got to a point, after about six months... like there was this _thing_ under the skin, and it would never stop, this constant thrumming energy that _demanded_ and _overwhelmed_... After watch, after you fell asleep, deep in the night, I started sneaking out and I'd just run and run and run through the night, it was the only thing I could do to get everything calm... And I hated how much noise I'd make, everything seemed so goddamn _loud_ , Steve, even at night, and I thought I'd wake everyone up so I just got... quieter.”

“Jesus, Bucky. Why didn't you _tell_ me?” Steve had moved in close to Bucky and gently, slowly began to put his arms around him, telegraphing every move in case Bucky was feeling flinchy. He remembered those days, how Bucky had startled all of them at least once by appearing silently next to them. Steve just assumed he'd gotten some sort of recon training at some point, and that was why he could move so quietly.

Bucky rolled his eyes and grabbed Steve's wrists, snuggling in close and winding Steve's arms firmly around him. He leaned back into Steve's warmth, staring away and down. “If you had asked me, I honest to God just thought I was going crazy. And I couldn't tell _anyone_ that. They'd have sent me home. Peggy was always trying to send me home. She knew I wasn't right. I didn't know how fast I was running through the forest at night, or how far... I would just run. So I didn't realise anything was... _unnatural_ about me until... you remember that Hydra base on the Czech border?”

“Yeah. What were they building?”

“Some sort of poison gas that would kill anyone who wasn't Aryan. Remember? We made Gabe and Jim sit it out so we were short-handed.”

“Oh, yeah. Ugly day. What happened, Buck?”

Bucky smiled, tight and joyless. “I put my fist straight through someone. Some Hydra gunner got up behind me while I was fighting his friend and I just turned and slammed my fist into him hard as I could and I grabbed his fucking heart and ripped it out, Steve. I almost told you that night. Remember? We both talked at once, and I said no, you go first, and you told me about wantin' to marry Peggy. Didn't feel much like talking, after that.”

“Jesus,” Steve said.

“Yeah.”

“That was the last op before--”

“ _Yeah_ ,” Bucky said. “The train.” He moved slightly away from Steve. “Still. I shoulda said something, but you know what?” Bucky looked over at him with an expression on his face that Steve couldn't figure out, quiet and raw and sad. “I'm a coward.”

“Buck, no--”

“The coward James Buchanan Barnes. Always have been. Always will be.” Bucky smiled again, still joyless. “Christ, I sound like a bad country song.”

“You're dead fucking wrong, Buck,” Steve said, a hard, angry edge creeping into his voice.

“Name one time I've done _anything_ other than follow the path of least resistance,” Bucky said. “Don't worry. I'll give you all night.” He rolled up to his feet, graceful as ever, and turned to go back into the cave. “I could rip a man's heart out wth my bare hands, but I couldn't tell you I loved you. Couldn't leave Hydra, until it fell apart under me.”

“No,” Steve said, jumping to his feet and grabbing Bucky's metal arm. “You are _not_ walking away with that being the last thing said.”

Bucky's eyes widened and though Steve couldn't feel his body tense up, he saw it, felt the plates of the arm shifting in his grip. _Fuck it,_ Steve thought. He got in close, shoving Bucky against the rock wall near the cave entrance, caging Bucky between his arms. Steve's jaw was set and dammit he _would_ fight Bucky if Bucky tried to get free. “Listen, you goddamn stubborn idiot. You are not a coward. You are many things, and full of shit is one of them, but _surviving is not cowardice_. Going to hell to save my life? Also not cowardice. Blowing your cover on TV, to save a bunch of strangers from AIM? Still. Not. Cowardice.”

Bucky narrowed his eyes at Steve. “Let go. Dinner's burning.”

“Fuck you,” growled Steve. “Kiss me.” He pushed his face in to Bucky's, ghosting his lips over the other man's.

Bucky's eyelashes dipped closed, and he parted his lips. “I hate you,” he whispered.

“I know,” Steve said into his mouth, right before their lips touched. Kissing Bucky was one thing he would never get tired of. The kiss started off almost chaste, lips open but no real direction to it, just a small and pleasant thing in the night. It ended and Steve was momentarily startled by how cold the Siberian air was on the wetness left on his lips by the kiss.

But then Bucky lunged forwards, claiming his mouth again, his lips burning, his need a hot and savage thing. He fisted his hands into Steve's short blond hair, pulling hard, not letting Steve escape his assault.

Steve's hands drifted down from the rock, one coming to rest on the back of Bucky's neck and the other against his chest, ready to push Bucky gently away when and if he came up for air. This was too much. The Avengers, his team, were less than ten feet away and he was halfway to hard and Bucky was kissing him like it was the last kiss they'd ever share. This could get out of hand very fast. Part of Steve (the lower part) very much wanted it to get out of hand because _fuck_ , the things that Bucky was doing with his mouth... But then Bucky bit his lip hard, hard enough to draw blood, and the sharp and unexpected pain was enough to bring Steve to his senses. He pushed at Bucky's chest, separating them.

“Buck, what the hell--”

Bucky still had his fingers twisted in Steve's hair, and glared at him with a sort of ragged desperation, his breath coming short and rough. “I'm a coward because if you ever go and die on me I won't do the right thing and kill myself. I'll go so far off the rails. Spiral back down into something terrible. You're the only way I know what good is.”

Steve felt his heart crack. He gasped out, “I can't promise I won't die on you but I will promise that I will come back and haunt the daylights out of you from beyond the grave so don't even think bullshit like that. I will _never_ let you go.” He grazed a hand over Bucky's cheekbone, sharp as the rest of him. “Buck, what's wrong? What brought this on?”

“You ran at that alien today with no weapons and no plan, and your team just stood there with its collective thumb up its ass. I thought they _helped_ you. I thought--” Bucky unclenched his hands from Steve's hair and turned away, slamming his metal hand into the stone outcropping. “I can't _fucking_ \--” He made a noise that was half-growl, half cry of despair.

Bucky looked back at Steve, about to say something else, and saw the blood on his mouth. He sighed and stepped closer, running ran a flesh thumb over Steve's lip, wiping the blood. “M'sorry.” He began to curl away. “ _Fuck_ , I feel like I'm always apologising.”

Steve pulled him back. “You don't have anything to apologise for. But if you're trying to keep me around, you gotta know that I never felt safer than when you were on my six.”

Bucky leaned into him, nudging his head beneath Steve's chin and slinging his arm around Steve's waist. He exhaled, long and low. “You've _got_ a sniper,” he said at last. “He was the only one who had his shit together when you decided to run off and play Captain Asshole. You were right. I make more sense on slack, now.”

Steve smiled. “Is that a yes?” He tried to keep his heart rate down, hoping Bucky wouldn't realise how much Steve wanted this, how hope was fizzing through his bloodstream like bubbles in champagne.

“It's a _maybe_. I don't think it's a given that we'd be good as a unit in the field again. I've changed a lot.”

“So have I. So we need a little practice.”

“Yeah,” Bucky breathed.

Steve was glad Bucky's head was still tucked against his neck so he couldn't see Steve's expression. Although his traitor heart had probably given the whole game away, thumping in his chest like a kick-drum. He could see what Bucky couldn't: that his fantasy of remaining the mythical ghost-assassin, doing covert work unseen by the general public, was rapidly becoming untenable. That there was a future in sight where Bucky could be known and celebrated as a hero. Where Steve could walk down the street in New York with his arm over Bucky's shoulders and kiss him right there in front of everybody so they'd all know how goddamn lucky Steve was to have the love of this filthy angel of a man.

And the best thing is, Steve didn't have to do anything at all. He just had to wait for Bucky to be... _Bucky._ The Definitely-Not-A-Hero who saved millions of people from AIM mind control. Who punched a T.Rex in the face because it was looking at Northern Manhattan wrong. Who would do it again without thinking, stepping in between innocents and danger, and then spend a week laying low, grumbling and cursing about the attention. And then one day soon, Bucky'd just get used to it. Like the rest of them had.

“Hey, Buck.” Steve said, sniffing.

“What.”

“You burned dinner again.”

“I know.” Bucky sighed and unwrapped himself from around Steve. “Five other people in there, none of them coulda leaned over and moved the meat away from the fire. Those morons able to do anything without you?”

Steve giggled. “I bet Tony's currently inventing a device to move the meat off the fire for him, but watch out for the first version of Tony's machines. They always explode.”

“What does Version 2.0 do?” Bucky said, looking mildly alarmed.

Steve shrugged. “Usually tries to take over the world.”

 

* * *

 

Natasha glanced up as Steve and Bucky walked back into the cave. Bucky was shaking his head and laughing to himself, and Steve was looking at James and grinning so wide it was like even his gigantic frame couldn't contain all the happiness inside him. His lip was split, and there was a smudge of blood on his chin.

She looked away. Much as she was delighted for Steve, for regaining his joie de vivre in the form of the Winter Soldier, there were moments when seeing them together was like catching hold of a knife by the blade. She couldn't escape the feeling that Steve had been her friend first. Now they mainly spoke when Steve needed advice about Bucky.

And she knew that she would potentially be great friends with Bucky. She was equal parts fascinated and terrified by him, both due to his sheer technical skill, but also due to what he might be able to tell her about herself. But she wasn't ready to let go of her resentment. Of how much pull he had on Steve. Of how he had taken everything Hydra had dished out for the best part of a century and came out the other side this vibrantly alive person: older, wiser, fiercer, but still recogniseably the cocky Brooklyn kid he'd been in the past. Of how he had a past to come back to, not just implanted memories of nonexistent parents. It was easier, overall, Natasha thought, to just sit next to Clint and quietly mock James and Steve and their general cloying, saccharine in-love-ness. Almost everything was easier next to Clint. He was just so... accepting.

Bucky moved the last of the deer meat off the fire and handed a big chunk of it to Steve. Clint made grabby hands for seconds, too, and Bucky tore off a piece for him.

As Clint reached to take the meat, Tony groaned in scandalised horror. “Ew, you're going to eat that? Think where his hands have probably _been_ in the past five minutes.” At that, Steve blushed (“See?!” cried Tony, pointing), and Bucky shot Tony such a lasciviously pleased-with-himself look that Tony choked a little. Tony choked even more when Bucky slowly put his dirty index and middle fingers in his own mouth, and sucked the charcoal and meat juices off them with obscene, carnal enjoyment.

“He can wash it off with vodka if he's worried,” said Bucky to Tony.

Natasha waved the comment away. “I've seen Clint's apartment. He's not worried. Also, he hasn't done dishes since the Bush administration. ”

“If I leave them long enough, they do themselves,” said Clint around a mouthful of barbecued venison.

“You're one of those assholes who thinks you don't need to shampoo because hair is self-cleaning, aren't you?” said Sam.

“I think it coz it's true,” mumbled Clint past more venison.

“Man. _White people_ ,” said Sam.

“So. Who has the next story?” asked Bruce.

“No more Hydra stories,” Sam groaned, gesturing at Bucky. “Man, I gotta say, I respect your journey and shit, but torture stories and a good night's sleep are two things that don't mix.”

Bucky looked mildly confused. “I didn't talk about torture..?”

Sam just put his head in his hands and groaned again.

“In Latveria,” said Natasha, narrowing her eyes at Bucky. “The shapeshifter. She _knew_ you. That was personal.”

“It was,” Bucky responded, pointing his chin at Sam. “But he doesn't want horrible stories.”

“No,” said Sam, through his hands. “I don't mind horrible stories. What I mind is you telling them like any of that shit they did to you was even remotely okay. Like it was some summer-camp adventure.”

“This one time? At assassin camp? The counselors broke my leg and threw me outside to die?” Clint said, in a sing-song voice.

Sam pointed at Clint. “This. Yes. But wash your hair, motherfucker. With shampoo.”

“I want to hear the shapeshifter story,” said Natasha, with a chilling finality.

“It's a war story,” Bucky said to Sam. Catching Steve's confused look, Bucky clarified. “Italian campaign. You weren't there yet. I wasn't _this_ yet,” he said, indicating his jacked-up body. “Just a scared kid wth a rifle.”

“What rifle? You were a sniper then, too, weren't you?” asked Clint, leaning forwards with interest.

Bucky smiled. “Springfield M1903, iron sights.”

“Show-off. What was your range?”

Bucky just spread his hands and shrugged. “Far enough.”

Steve folded his arms. “He was a goddamn avenging angel with that rifle.”

“Steve, that was _after_ ,” Bucky said, before turning back to Clint. “The army didn't have a sniper training programme. The Germans had one. And the Russians had a fantastic one. But us? Top 10% of range scores at Basic got offered positions as unit marksman. I asked what that was and they said, hiding behind things and shooting at the enemy from far away, and I was like, sign me the fuck up. Sounded a lot better than running towards the enemy. We had no training, and no specialist rifles. I finally got a scope and a better rifle with the Howlies, but back then I just had the same gun as everyone else.”

“Anyway. It's early 1943. We're marching up Italy. It's cold as shit and muddy as hell. So cold the mud had a nice icy crust on it to cut your ankles. Our platoon is long-range reconnaissance, which means we're way out ahead of the rest of the 107th and indeed the whole Fifth Army. I'm a corporal. Our unit's me, Dugan, Morita, this idiot named Ralston, and Izzy Cohen who was from not too far from us in Brooklyn. Good guy. We knew some of the same people. This swear to god sixteen year old kid from Kansas we all called Junior. Our sergeant's some wop from California named Dino. He was all right, for a wop.”

“We're supposed to go to this village, do recon of the surrounding forest, and wait for further orders. The village is a tiny medieval thing in a valley, surrounded by trees, between Padua and the mountains. Creepy place. All cypress trees and ancient stone buildings and fog, all the time. Cold and mud and fog. You couldn't get dry. There was no real shelter. All the buildings are bombed out, no roofs, only some walls. And somewhere out there in the hills and the mist is the German 10th Army and fucked if anybody knows where.”

“It all started our third night there. There was no food. Resupply is taking a while to reach us because of the mud, and everything you could forage had already been taken or burnt by the Italians or the Germans. No sign of our orders. Sergeant Manelli is getting antsy, wants to send a runner back to the main army, but our Lieutenant, this greenhorn Yalie from a good New England family, Lieutenant Cabot, no, he's happy to just sit there. On the one hand, nobody's shooting at us. On the other, we have no food and are at the bottom of a wooded valley which is the worst place to be in a fight.”

“Lieutenant Cabot and the other squad are all bunking together in the largest building. Sarge has a bad feeling, though, and he has us scatter ourselves round the village in different places, no more than two of us together anywhere. There's a little church that's a bit more intact and Dugan and Morita were bunking there, but I figured though I was pretty sure God had abandoned us it wasn't a good time to be making new enemies. I decide to sleep in a big oak tree, because there's no mud up a tree, and I can almost not hear Ralston snore from up there.”

“Also, sleeping in trees is excellent,” adds Clint.

“Yep. Nobody ever looks up,” says Bucky.

“Ugh, snipers,” groans Natasha, but she ruins it with the affectionate smirk she throws Clint's way.

“It's freezing that night. New moon, so dark, too. I don't think any of us slept great, and we all took turns on watch. We heard nothing. No animals, nothing. Just silence and fog. We wake up the next morning at first light and Sarge goes in to see the Lieutenant and he comes out of the building with a look of utter terror on his face. We all run up to see what's going on and inside... everyone is dead. Throats cut. The entire squad, and Cabot too. _And every damn one of them is smiling_.”

The fire chooses that moment to crackle loudly and two of Earth's Mightiest Heroes, who shall be left nameless to preserve their reputations, jump at the sound.

Steve, who was not one of them, scooches closer to Bucky, arm twining around his waist, as Bucky continues the story.

“Sarge sends Junior back towards the FOB, mostly because if shit gets real bad none of us want to see him die. Tells him to pass on that we need help. Reinforcements. Food. Then he and Izzy and Reb go out on patrol. It's still foggy as hell. There's no visibility in the forest at all. But there's just... nothing. Silence. No trail to follow, nothing. They vanish in the mist. Even Dum Dum's quiet, which is a frightening prospect in itself. Him and me and Morita start tearing up the town, looking to see if there are any hidden cellars where someone could hide. Someone... or something.”

“Izzy and Reb come back just before sunset. They got turned around, and lost Sarge in the mist somewhere. We want to start calling out for him, do something, anything, but as the sun goes down, we start seeing lights on the hilltops, in the distance. Campfires.” Bucky smiles. “We found the German 10th Army. Or, they were not far off finding us.”

“I go up that oak tree again to see if I can pick anything out that might be Sarge, and just as I get in position, he walks out of the fog. Fuck, were we relieved. And Reb says _Sarge!_ and goes running up to him, his boots squelching and crunching in the mud, and throws out his arms.” Bucky looks around at the Avengers and drops his voice. “That's when I noticed that Sarge's footsteps didn't make any sound at all.”

“ _oh, fuck,_ ” someome who is not Sam Wilson, nobody can prove it, squeaks out in a surprisingly girly tone of voice.

“As the thing wearing the Sarge's skin lunges out towards Reb in the deepening night, it _shifts_ , and then there are two Rebs, wrestling for possession of a nasty silver dagger with a serrated edge. Moments later one of them is on the ground with a long, gaping wound like a second mouth, gaping across his throat. The blood bubbling out looked black in the dark. The remaining Reb staggers towards Izzy, croaking out _y'all gotta help me--_ and Izzy takes a step forwards and draws his pistol but he's not gonna fire because it _might_ be Reb. But it's still not making enough sound.”

“Izzy says _Reb, Reb, put the knife down, kid_. I hiss at him from up the tree, _Izzy, run_ , and Izzy turns and he slips and goes down face-first on the icy mud. The thing looks up at me and snarls and I shoot at it, I was square on too, and it just... shifts around the bullets, laughing at me. Then it leaps on Izzy. I just... half-climb, half-fall out of the tree in the least graceful way possible and go running to pull it off Izzy. It's managed to cut Izzy's left hamstring so he can't run, and it's raising the blade to cut his throat when I come stumbling in swinging my rifle by the muzzle like I'm Pistol Pete Reiser steppin' up to the plate--”

“--Brooklyn Dodgers outfielder, got us to the World Series in '41,” explains Steve.

"I understood that reference," says Tony.

“--and for one moment the thing wearing Reb's skin looks in my eyes as I'm about to hit it and I feel like it can see everything in my head. _Everything_. I remember whining with terror and thwacking it on the noggin with the rifle stock. It drops its knife and I drop my rifle and I grab Izzy, throw him over my shoulder, and run. I'm slipping and skittering on the icy mud. Its knife is all tangled up in Izzy's clothes and I shove it in my belt and take off for the church where Dum Dum and Morita are. I'm too scared to look over my shoulder to see how close it is behind me.”

“I stumble into the church and drop Izzy. He's unconscious. Dum Dum and Morita just look at the expressio on my face like _oh, shit_ and Dum Dum grabs his tommy gun. Morita starts lighting all the candles in the church because fuck it, we're all going to die, and it would be nice not to die in the dark. Then he checks on Izzy. Meanwhile I'm trying to explain what happened but my brain is kinda refusing to accept that I saw something change its shape and morph around bullets so I'm mostly just stuttering. The church's windows and roof are blown out, but the apse and the altar is pretty intact. There's still a big plaster Italian Jesus looking down from it and everything's damp, dripping from the fog. We kinda... all huddle under the crucifix and surround ourselves with candles and decide if we make it to dawn, we're all abandoning our post and marching back to the FOB and damn the consequences. The candles only shed light about ten feet around us and the rest is darkness. Then, at the edge of the flickering light from the altar candles, we see movement. A skirt. Pretty red hair. And Dum Dum's about to unload his entire clip when he stops and says, _...Amelia?_ And this real looker of a dame steps out and says, _Timmy, help me, I don't know how I got here_. It's Dugan's wife.”

“Dugan's pale and starts shaking and he looks over at me like he didn't really believe me before and I whisper _it's not her_ and then we look back and it's gone, back into the surrounding darkness. At this point I realise I don't have any weapons other than the knife I took off the shapeshifter. Morita's whispering the Lord's Prayer over and over again behind me and it kinda gives me an idea. I get up and I'm looking around for something that might classify as holy water, hopin' that the water dripping down off the crucifix will do, when we see movement again from a different part of the church. And into the light steps, _well_.” Bucky pauses and looks down at his hands. “One guess who the shapeshifter uses to get to me.”

He smiles at Steve. “There you were, all tiny and pale, a private's uniform hanging off you, and you said _Bucky, I love you, I followed you..._ and Morita is so stunned he stops recitin' the Lord's Prayer. And I am suddenly not terrified any more. I am fucking furious. How dare it. How fucking _dare_ it. I stumble towards it, knife behind my back, and say _Stevie, Stevie, c'mere Stevie_ , and Dugan grabs for my sleeve but I pull away from him. And the thing wearing Steve's skin takes another step into the light, and it starts to smile.”

“I can already see it shimmering, shifting into something else when I bring the knife out and slice it down the monster's face. It's laughing at me, expecting to be able to shift around the blade, but the dew off the crucifix must have worked because the blade touches it and it screams in shock. And just for a moment, a split second, it's a beautiful, elfin woman with green hair, her cheek split and blood pouring down her face. I shift the blade into my other hand and I'm going to fucking finish this. For Sarge. For Reb. For the whole goddamn other squad. For the fucking nerve she had, tryna steal Stevie's face. But she screams again and runs, and the muzzle flash of Dum Dum's Tommy gun lights her up as she flees out the door.”

“Then I turn around and Dum Dum and Morita are just... staring at me. I think I looked pretty crazy because Morita backs up and puts his hands up, and I realise I'm still waving the knife around, all black with the witch's blood. I look at 'em like some sort of wild creature and I hiss out, _we are never talking of this night again_. Dugan starts to say _it's okay, Bucky_ , but I cut him off. Tell 'em we're doing rotating watches, me going first. I was too angry to sleep, anyway. I go out and grab one of the dead men's rifles and as much ammo as I can carry and sit there and glare off into the darkness until the sun rises. In the end all three of us stay up all night. Little bit after dawn, Junior shows up with the rest of battalion. This major comes up to us and says, who's in charge, and Dugan just points to me. That's how I ended up a sergeant.”

“Buck, were Izzy and Junior at Azzano? I don't remember 'em,” Steve asked.

“Nah. Izzy was okay, but lost his leg. It got infected. He was sent home to Brooklyn. Had a wife and two kids, another on the way. Junior... he was in the next foxhole over the night the 107th got captured. Caught a mortar in the face. Wasn't even enough of him left afterwards to send home in a shoebox.” Bucky sighed. “Don't go to war. It's not romantic or glorious. It's just... shit and cold and death.”

Steve wrapped his arms around Bucky, and brushed his lips over one of Bucky's sharp cheekbones. Bucky wriggled a little, out of his grasp, and looked at Natasha, his eyes cold. “So. Curiosity satisfied?”

Natasha nodded.

“Okay then,” Bucky said, rising to his feet and walking to the foot locker in the back of the cave. “I'll be back in the morning.”

“Wait,” Steve said. “Where are you going?”

“Can't sleep in here with all of you,” Bucky explained, his back to the room, pulling two bundles out of the foot locker. “You're high-value threats.”

“But we _hired_ you,” said Tony.

Bucky shrugged as he undid one of the bundles. It was a bearskin. “My brain doesn't care.” He threw the bearskin over his shoulders and walked towards the cave entrance, carrying the second bundle. “I can sit here awake all night listening to your hearts beat and thinking of increasingly elaborate ways to kill all of you, or I could go sleep in a tree.” He smiled at them, a nasty, predatory smile. “Which would you prefer, oh masters mine?”

“Tree,” said Banner, quickly.

“Definitely tree,” agreed Sam.

“Thank you,” said Bucky, inclining his head before turning to leave.

“Oh, hey, Terminator. Quill wrote back. He said the aliens do have an affinity for radiation.”

“Great. I know where they are,” Bucky said.

Tony thought how oddly domestic he looked, almost soft, standing in the firelight with a big fluffy bear pelt wrapped around him for warmth. _No_ , Tony thought to himself. _Killing machine. Killing machine. Not soft or fluffy or cute. Crazy cyborg brainwashed killing machine snuggled inside furry blanket._

The fur slipped off Bucky's right shoulder, revealing thin cotton straining over his frankly improbable musculature. He tugged the fur back up with the fingers of his metal hand. “The base I mentioned earlier. They also stored enriched uranium there. There was a leak, in the 1980s.”

Bucky saw the interrogative look Natasha shot him and smiled at her. “Nothing to do with me. Everything to do with shitty Soviet cement. Good night.”

As soon as Bucky had disappeared out of the cave, Sam sighed and started quietly counting down. “Five, four, three, two...” Tony shot him a look of confusion. Then Steve, oblivious to everyone else, got up and walked out of the cave too. Tony's eyebrows lifted in amused understanding at Sam, and Sam rolled his eyes.

“Well, at least Bucky seems a lot calmer around us these days,” said Bruce.

“Oh,” purrs Natasha, examining her nails. “There's only one reason someone like him is calm. It's because he's confident he can take all of us down with whatever weapons he has to hand. We've been observed, analysed, and catalogued as high-level but still non-lethal threats.”

“I'm really glad this is going to be over tomorrow,” groaned Sam.

 

* * *

 

“Hey, soldier,” Steve called out as he walks through the pine forest below the cave. “Room in that hammock for two?”

Bucky laughed, low and dirty. “Steve. We break things. I do _not_ want to fall out of a tree when we inevitably get carried away.”

“Well, what do you want to do then?” Steve asked, running his tongue over his lower lip.

Bucky dropped the bundled hammock on the ground and slid a hand under Steve's parka. “You still wearing your uniform under there? Because right now I want to do bad things to the flag.” Then Bucky makes a little moue of disappointment as he doesn't feel the familiar kevlar-blend fabric under his fingers.

“We need to do that sometime,” said Steve, pulling Bucky close.

“We really do,” Bucky breathed, his body pressed against Steve's, wrapping them both in the bearskin for warmth. “Because you look so fucking good in that skintight uniform. But meanwhile...”

“Meanwhile,” Steve said, ghosting kisses over Bucky's jaw and reaching down a hand between them. He palmed the thick bulge in Bucky's trousers and Bucky made a sound that was half-moan, half-growl, and it was Steve's second-favourite sound in the world, right after the wrecked, breathy way Bucky would say Steve's name when he was close.

Bucky pushed up into Steve's hand, craving more friction, his body flexing and bending in ways that made Steve want to shove him right down in the snow and outline every cut of muscle on Bucky's chest and arms with his tongue.

Bucky pushed Steve back against a tree trunk and then crowded in on him, reaching a hand down to undo the fly of Steve's trousers and pull Steve's hardening cock free of his underwear.

“God, it's freezing out here,” Steve gasped.

Bucky pushed his mouth against Steve's, silencing him with an urgent, bruising kiss. Steve felt Bucky pull himself out and line up his cock against Steve's, then a hot hand encircled both of them and Steve's brain shorted out for a moment as he felt the silky hardness of Bucky's cock rubbing against his own. He moaned into Bucky's mouth as Bucky expertly began stroking them both off. Then he added his hand on top of Bucky's and it was Bucky's turn to shiver with pleasure. They were still pressed against each other for warmth against the cold Siberian night, the hard planes of their abs increasingly smeared with precome as they worked themselves closer and closer to the edge.

Steve was making little breathy moans as Bucky leaned down and nipped his way down Steve's neck, biting and sucking bruises into Steve's pale skin, all the way down to his pectorals through his shirt. And, since it seemed to be a confessional sort of night, started confessing some things of his own. “Buck, I've been, I've been half-hard all day since the battle, _fuck_ , watching you fight, it turns me on so _much.”_

Bucky smiled into his neck. “So you have a uniform kink, a competence kink, a robot kink...”

“I do not have a robot kink,” moaned Steve.

Bucky's only response was to smile and stick two fingers of his left hand into his mouth. Steve whined a little bit at the sight of Bucky's bowed red lips over the matte-black metal of his new arm, and his eyes blew dark with lust. Bucky reached down between Steve's legs and trailed hard, metal fingers up his perineum and towards his hole. Bucky held his fingers there, just ghosting gently over the tight, puckered flesh of Steve's hole, and whispered, “tell me again about that robot kink you don't have, Steve.”

Steve's head was thrown back and he was trying to thrust down onto Bucky's fingers. Bucky moved them away. “Ah-ah. Use your words, Steve.”

“It's not a robot kink. It's just _you_ , everything about you turns me on and if you don't let me ride your fingers right now I will throw you down in the snow,” Steve snarled.

Bucky pressed his lips to Steve and smiled. “As you wish,” he murmured, letting the bearskin slip from his shoulders to the ground and sinking to his knees on top of it. He took Steve's cock into his mouth at the same time as he breached Steve's tight ring with one finger. Steve felt like he was being torn in half; part of him wanted to arch and shut his eyelids and just let his eyes roll back in his head, but if he did that, he'd miss watching Bucky go down on him, lips stretched and cheeks hollowed as he looked back up at Steve through his ridiculously thick eyelashes. The heat and wetness of Bucky's mouth was almost burning, against the frozen air around them.

Then Bucky skated a second finger around Steve's hole, questioningly.

“Yes,” Steve gasped. “More.”

Bucky growled his approval around Steve's dick and _fuck_ , if that wasn't electric. Then he pushed a second finger slowly into Steve, curling and twisting and beginning to thrust into him with the same rhythm as he was sucking Steve off. Steve made little bitten-off noises of pleasure and thrust down harder on Bucky's fingers as Bucky twisted them and hit Steve's prostate. Steve's entire body spasmed with pleasure, and Bucky brought up his forearm to pin Steve's hips against the tree. He growled again in warning around Steve's cock and Steve just moaned, “goddamn, keep, keep, don't stop--”

Steve could feel Bucky's lips quirk into a smile around his cock and then Bucky growled again and sank his mouth down over Steve all the way to the base, opening his throat and stopping his gag reflex. He thrust a third finger into Steve's hole at the same time and slammed them into Steve's prostate and Steve lost it, hands scrabbling against the rough bark of the tree his back was pressed against, lips crying out, “Jesus, Bucky, I'm, I'm,” and Bucky kept deep-throating him and making these low animal growling noises and Steve arched and came, hot spurts of come down Bucky's throat as Bucky hummed and smiled and ran his tongue up and down Steve's shuddering, softening cock. Steve slumped against the tree, unable to do anything but sweat and pant and float down from the high that was still crashing over him.

He was dimly aware of Bucky standing up, his mouth red and wet and abused, eyes fierce with lust, and hand pumping at his own aching, angry cock. “Buck, just gimme a sec, I'll, just wait,” Steve mumbled.

“Too close,” Bucky bit out, and Steve felt Bucky's metal hand circling the back of his neck, pushing him down to his knees. Then that same hand gently travelled around to his jaw and tilted his chin upwards. Steve at first thought Bucky wanted him to suck his cock, but Bucky put a thumb over Steve's mouth in a definite no. Bucky looked down at him, red lower lip caught in his teeth, and moaned out, “so fuckin' gorgeous.” Steve couldn't take it any more and opened his lips, sucking the thumb covering them into his mouth. Bucky's eyes slammed shut in pleasure and his hand moved faster, rougher over his own cock, twisting over the head.

“Steve, can I--” he murmured.

“Yes, Bucky, do it,” Steve said, around Bucky's thumb.

Bucky whined. “so good to me,” was all he managed to say before his hips started jerking and he made Steve's absolute favourite noise, the breathy, rough moan of “Steve” that he would make just before he came. And then Steve felt hot ropes of come on his face, in his eyelashes, across his cheeks, down his neck. With Bucky's thumb still in his mouth, the sensation was incredibly erotic, and Steve felt his cock twitching, wanting to go hard again. It was something he was getting used to: Bucky was basically walking sin, and the fact that he, Steve Rogers, turned Bucky on so much, that Bucky wanted nothing more than to find new and better ways to pleasure Steve, that was worth every goddamn year in the ice and then some.

After a moment, after rough breaths and a few more little moans, Bucky sank to his knees beside Steve and took his face in his hands. “Look what a mess I've made of you,” Bucky murmured. “Gotta clean you up before I can send you back to your team.”

“You're a terrible person, Bucky Barnes,” Steve smiled. 

“Yeah, but everybody knows that,” Bucky said, kissing and licking the come off Steve's neck. And biting a few more hickeys in for good measure. Steve was _his_ , only his, and Bucky was going to mark him so everyone would know. “But they all think you're a paragon of innocence, virtue and fair play.” Bucky moved up to Steve's jaw, and then his face, kissing off all the come that painted it. “There,” he said, pressing a final, tiny kiss to the end of Steve's nose. “You reek of sex and you're covered in love bites, but you're presentable.”

He stood up, taking a moment to do up his trousers again, and reached out for Steve to help him up. “You sure I can't share the hammock?” Steve asked.

“I don't think I can find branches strong enough to hold our combined weight. I'm not even sure the ropes will hold both of us. I last used this thing in the fifties,” Bucky said.

Steve sighed. He wanted nothing more than to wrap up around Bucky for the night, both of them snuggled under the bearskin. “Fine,” he said, pulling Bucky close for one last kiss. “Tomorrow. You, me, save the world?”

“Again,” Bucky said. “Wish it could _stay_ saved, for once.”

And they kissed under the pine trees, the billions of stars of the Siberian night twinkling down at them, the friends who had withstood sickness and death and ice and torture to find each other again, both transformed into creatures of deadly beauty, one light, one dark, both in a future they never expected to see. And in finding each other had found themselves, and in themselves a love so bright and hot that took their breath away every time they so much as looked at each other.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTTUKe33rFo
> 
> Ack. So sorry this has been so long without an update. In the meantime, I finished Number One With A Bullet, wrote 15k of post-CA:CW fluff and angst (Spotless, here: http://archiveofourown.org/series/467503 ) and outlined my Stucky Big Bang fic, which is called Lucky Seven.
> 
> I'm mostly going to be on Lucky Seven for a bit (it's heeere: a Cap!Steve/Modern!Bucky AU full of angst and sex and tattoos and motorcycles*: http://archiveofourown.org/works/7033105/chapters/16002481 ), but I'll definitely do the next chapter of this soon because it's Alien battle! And then BIG PLOT MOMENT. 
> 
> Thanks for being patient with Bucky's stories. They're mostly over for now. There'll be a few more later after the plot comes cantering back from the pasture I put it in for the past couple chapters. 
> 
> Also: the MCU timeline for World War II is irretrievably fucked. The US Army was nowhere near northern Italy in 1943 when the Azzano thing (supposedly on the Austrian border) theoretically happened. I have just gone with that and said the 107th was somewhere near Padua when they really shouldn't have been north of Anzio until 1944. Thus, my apologies to like-minded folks who love history. 
> 
> Also also, I am REALLY behind on comments so sorry about that! I figured you'd rather have me write more fic than respond to comments if it came down to it but PLEASE KNOW YOUR COMMENTS ARE AMAZING and I love them and they make my life worthwhile and I read every one, sometimes several times.
> 
> The named characters from Bucky's shapeshifter stories are all the original Howling Commandos from the comics.
> 
> * _What are the best things in life, Conan, &c_


	5. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning of battle, and what happens therein.

When Tony thinks of the many ways he's almost died, falling off a ledge in Siberia while holding his dick in his hand would probably have been the worst. As it happens, he doesn't _quite_ fall, but it's near enough for his stomach to tie up in a knot of fear and his overenthusiastic mind's eye to picture his broken body at the bottom of the rocky hillside.

He has, however, managed to piss all over his feet.

“I _hate_ you,” says Tony.

The patch of shadow squatting on the boulder above the cave shifts, and chuckles. “I'm just sitting here watching the sun come up. Not my problem if you have no situational awareness.”

Steve sticks his head out of the cave. “Hey, you okay, Tony? I heard squealing. Oh, hey, Buck.”

The shadow smirks at Tony, and indicates Steve with its metal hand.

Tony groans, wipes his hands and feet in the snow as best he can, and briefly contemplates going back to arms manufacturing.

Something in the cave beeps, and Natasha sashays out, holding a small StarkGPS up. “Hey boys. Thor's back. His tracker just popped up about five miles northeast of here.”

“Okay, well, as soon as room service brings me my eggs benedict and fresh-squeezed orange juice, we can hit the road,” Tony grumps.

“Powdered eggs,” Natasha says, handing him a pouch. “Orange drink,” she says, handing him another pouch. “We leave in five.” She smiles. “Soldier, I won't insult you by asking if you're ready.”

“Thank you,” comes the amused voice from atop the boulder, as Natasha and Steve head back inside.

“They don't count!” Tony says. “Natasha's like your evil twin sister, and Steve, you and him have your... _thing_.”

Clint yawns and staggers out of the cave next, unzipping his trousers he goes. “Hey, Soldier. Good spot. Hi, Tony. Man, I gotta pee. _Man_ , it's cold. I think my balls are trying to tunnel up into my stomach.”

 

* * *

 

The Avengers and their plus-one meet Thor in a small clearing in the pines. Thor is beaming, grinning down at the pile of weapons at his feet. He hefts a huge, heavy spear, all barbed head and a wide crossbar a few feet down the shaft. “These war-spears have not been used in 500 years! The Asgardian High Armory were overcome with delight that they would see battle again!”

Bucky holds up a hand and Thor tosses him one of the spears. He catches it, weighs it in his fingers, assessing. “Not bad,” he says, his voice appreciative. The spears are about 7' long, short enough to use in a contained space but long enough that whatever gets impaled on it can't run up the spear past the crossbar and injure its bearer.

“Friend Stark, a favour?” Thor sighs and glances at Tony, who raises his eyebrows. “Unfortunately Lady Jane has explained the _selfie_ to Asgardians, and now my shield-mates demand I record images of my battles to share at banquets. Also the armoury would like photos of the antique weapons in action.”

Tony blinks at him for a moment, then _cackles_ with laughter. “Sure, sure,” he waves, barely able to form words between hoots of mirth. “I'll have Jarvis Snapchat the alien apocalypse for you.”

“Princess filter, just saying,” says Sam, because Sam is secretly evil (and also has lots of young teenage cousins).

Sam picks up an old-fashioned-looking large-calibre pistol from the pile, and Thor whispers, “it shoots an eldritch fire that burns through most anything.” Sam raises an appreciative eyebrow and grabs a second pistol and a set of holsters.

Steve takes the spear from Bucky. He leans on it, testing its strength, and smiles at Bucky. “Where'd you get the idea for these, anyway?”

“Well,” Bucky says with a grin, “in the '60s and 70s, if you got to be a real big shot in Hydra, you went and bought yourself a castle. I've spent an awful lot of time standing in big stone rooms staring at tapestries, spacing out while the crème de la crème of shitbaggery droned on about new world order. I learned early on, if you stand very still and wear goggles and a muzzle, they tend to forget there's an actual thinking person inside. You're just another decorative suit of armour which, of course, they collected along with tapestries.” Bucky falls silent for a moment, biting at his bottom lip. “These spears are medieval boar-hunting spears. Saw 'em in a place called Schloss Ruger, which...” Bucky runs his hands through his hair. “...yeah. Schloss Ruger.”

“That's where they threatened to send spiderlings, if we failed and didn't have the good sense to terminate ourselves,” Natasha says. “They told terrible stories about what went on there.”

Bucky moves his lips into something that would have been a smile if it wasn't the only thing colder than the Siberian morning. “They were all true. And then some.”

“How long were you there?”

“Long enough.”

Thor pulls a massive, double-headed battle-axe out of the weapons pile and tosses it to Bucky. Bucky catches it one-handed and grins, cold and predatory, and in the background, Tony stops laughing. Bucky spins the battle-axe, throwing it in the air, catching it again. Getting used to its weight, its heft.

It's beautiful, in its way, and Tony finds himself mesmerised by the Soldier's graceful movements, and the flashes of silver from the designs carved on the axe's faces, designs that seem to shift when seen out of the corner of his eyes. He wonders if this is what a cobra's victims feel like, this dazed fascination with something deadly. He shakes his head to clear it. “Chop-chop, gang. Aliens. Let's go.”

As they load up, Thor's cheerful face grows sombre, and he says, “I hope the fates are with us. Even the nine Xi'an'arth left could devastate all of Midgard... their queen will have already birthed a new generation, and if we do not hurry, we may find ourselves facing hundreds, rather than just a few.”

“Okay, fam, we're not letting the Norse god give the pep talks any more,” Sam frowns. “Because strictly between you and me and all these fucking pine trees? He sucks at it.”

Steve glances at the faces of his team and is about to smooth things over – even work towards his own pep talk – when he notices Bucky. He's... off, somehow. His body language is an odd combination of determined and sullen, something he'd do back in the Howling Commandos, right before he was going to suggest something really stupid.

 _Stevie, why do a frontal attack and risk all the guys when I could sneak in there at night by myself instead_.

_Lemme go do recon, I can slip behind their lines._

_I'm following you onto that train. I can make the jump._

Steve raises his finger to the rest of the group and edges closer to six feet of blue-eyed trouble. “What is it, Buck?”

“If this is really the end of the world we need to have a quick chat about tactics. Especially if these bugs are holed up in a base that I know.” Bucky's gaze darts away, down to the snow. “Or I _should_ know, depending on the holes in my head.”

The others drift over, because unlike the Howlies where there was some semblance of a chain of command, every Avenger has an opinion and feels the need to voice it. “What is it?” asks Bruce, his eyes a little too wide for his mild tone.

Bucky turns to Thor. “Your people have fought these bugs before. What are our chances of making it out? Given that the base still has a level of radiation poisoning that's probably going to cut it down to only four of us actually being able to go in.”

Thor shrugs. “We will die so Midgard will be free.”

“Asgardian pep talks stiiill at 0 for 2,” whispers Sam.

Bucky paces away from the group, flipping the battle-axe around in movements which, while intricate, express a sort of savage frustration.

“Having second thoughts?” asks Tony, from a safe distance (aka, behind Thor). “I'm only paying you to track. No harm, if-”

“I'm not going to just fucking walk away. I'm a monster, but I'm not an _asshole_.” Bucky swings the battle-axe with increasing speed and fluidity, switching it between his hands, and trying out various grips. Then, without warning, he whirls and swings it at a decent-sized tree. The axe goes straight through it, severing the trunk in one go. The cut end of the tree drops down vertically next to its trunk, as if surprised, and then sways slightly before succumbing to gravity and toppling earthwards. It cracks off other nearby trees and hits the snow with a thunderous poof.

Bucky stomps forwards and picks up the axe, then looks at it in mild confusion. “Okay, I won't,” he mutters to nobody in particular as he examines the weapon for dullness, his metal thumb edging along the blade.

“Did you _have_ to give him a giant axe?” Tony hisses to Thor. “I'm going to have nightmares about this.”

Thor looks nonplussed. “He asked for it. And he is very effective with it.”

“He'd be _very effective_ with a broken espresso cup or a bit of garden twine. He's the fucking Winter Soldier, he can weaponise _anything_.” Tony groans and runs a hand down his face. “Axes give me the heebie-jeebies. Christ. At least you didn't give him a chainsaw. I never would have slept again.”

Meanwhile, Steve reaches out to put a hand on Bucky' shoulder, but Bucky flinches away. Which means it's worse than Steve thinks, if it's become a no-touching moment.

“Just...” Bucky mumbles.

“What, Buck.”

Bucky's shoulders slump. He tilts his head up to the sky, as if there were answers there. “… I want to go in by myself. Blow the place up, send 'em out. You pick 'em off as they come out.”

“What?! Bucky, _NO_ ,” Steve growls. “That is not happening.”

“Why?” asks Natasha, her tone ever so mild.

“In order to fight this, I'm going to have to be something I don't want you to see.” Bucky's smile then is real, and so melancholy it breaks Steve's heart. “I don't think anyone's ever witnessed it and lived.”

“Bucky, this is my _team_ ,” Steve says. “They are okay to see it.”

Bruce raises his hand. “Hi, I'm the Hulk. It's fine.”

Bucky shakes his head slightly at Bruce. “Anger is still an emotion. Still something recognizeably human. I don't have that, when I go as... far as I'm planning to go.”

“We've seen you punch out a T.Rex, Barnes,” says Tony. “You can step back and let the Winter Soldier take the wheel for a while.”

“See, that's the thing, Stark. We're not separate people,” Bucky says quietly. “I suppress some things to exist temporarily among civilians. I suppress other things when I become the killing machine. Pain; most emotion.”

Bruce steps closer to Bucky, the first time he's really approached the Winter Soldier. When he speaks, it's hesitant, barely audible to non-enhanced humans. “We should talk. I'd like to talk to you. After this. If we live,” he stutters out.

Bucky sighs. “Gonna tell me how to contain my demons, Banner?”

“No,” Bruce cuts back, and the harshness in his tone is surprising, considering his nebbishy demeanour and rumpled-laundry face. “Not at all. It's just... he's me, too. I call him the Other Guy, and he _looks_ different, so everyone _assumes_... but it's me. It's _always_ me. I don't meet many people that understand that.”

Bucky's mouth quirks up in a lopsided grin. “Nah, they don't. Though the mild-mannered alias thing must be nice. I can't really pass for anything other than a weapon.”

Bruce shrugs and one of his gloved hands curls into a fist. “If you define pitying looks as nice. Or inane suggestions about how exercise or diet or self-help books will absolutely solve all my anger issues, if I just _tried_ a little more. Because the problem is I haven't _tried_ hard enough.”

Bucky puts his metal hand on Bruce's shoulder. “Fuck 'em. Stay mad.”

“I intend to.”

“Okay,” Bucky says.

“Avengers! Anyone want to go show some aliens that the third planet ain't nothing to fuck with?” chirps Clint as he throws a leg over his snowmobile and powers it up.

(Sam sighs and wishes, not for the first time, there was another black person on the team so someone could truly _appreciate_ his pained, patient expression when white people make enthusiastic Wu-Tang references.)

Meanwhile, Bucky Barnes is pulling on his mask and goggles, disappearing into the comforting, dark embrace of his operational gear. He slings the battle-axe across his back, and then his stance... changes. The entire way he holds his body shifts into something more vicious, still calm and easy, but with the feeling of immense, contained power ready to be released at any moment, waiting to launch into explosive force and speed. It's why the Soldier's stillness never looked _right_ , was always so terrifying, Tony thought. The Soldier was made for movement. There's a purity to it, the purity of straight lines and razor blades, and the stillness is nothing but the moment before the cut is felt.

“We're ready,” Steve says.

The Soldier moves out, fast and silent, heading northwest. Heading towards the ghosts of his memory, and the horrors that have come down out of space.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am SO SORRY it took so long to update this. I wrote nearly 100k of fic for the Big Bang ([Lucky Seven](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7033105/chapters/16002481); go read it if you like motorcycles and suspense/thriller stories and sex) and then had pro deadlines and my life falling apart sorta and... yeah, up yours 2016. You were supposed to be the _good_ year.
> 
> And then... this was supposed to be a massive, 12k word chapter, and it just... didn't come easy. I have 5k at the end written, and the beginning, and still need to write the giant haunted house / alien fight in the middle. So instead of keeping you waiting even longer, here is a rather small 2.5k-word bone. I'm working on finishing the whole chapter ASAP but it may be another week or two given my work and travel schedule. 
> 
> Bruce fans: there will be Awesome Bruce happening in this and the next chapter. Trust.


	6. Humans Are Such Easy Prey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Avengers and their plus-T1000 take on xenomorphs in a disused Siberian nuclear compound. What could possibly go wrong? Oh, wait. Everything.

The base is sprawling, a mass of rotten cement buildings, a reactor tower, and low apartment blocks surrounded by a fence. A low guardhouse squats by the broken main gate. The housing blocks, clearly the most cheaply made, have already been reclaimed by the Siberian landscape. What hasn't collapsed under weather and a lack of repair has been broken by the roots of pine trees, taking hold in the cement and breaking up through walls and ceilings.

The main cluster of buildings around the reactor still look intact, or as best as the Avengers can see from a hill just outside the perimeter fence. According to Bucky – to the Winter Soldier, now – the long, low building next to the reactor hid a maze of underground levels that dug deep into the dark earth. Levels that had been his home in the early 1950s.

Steve risks a glance over at his friend, but could read nothing under the arctic-white mask and goggles as he gazes at his former home / prison. The Soldier's body, cased in insulated white leather, isn't tense, but there was that terrible feeling of _too still_ , the feeling of wrongness when the cobra stops weaving in the fractional heartbeat before it strikes. Steve feels heat pool in his groin, the first sweet pinpricks of arousal, and tears his attention away. This was pretty much the dictionary definition of _not the time_ , right before they went up against planet-destroying aliens. He needs to stop having these... _fantasies_.

(The Soldier sees Steve, in his peripheral vision. Hears the slight pickup in his heartbeat; notes the dilation of his pupils. He makes note of it for later.)

Steve clears his throat. “Thor, the pod holds a dozen aliens?”

“Aye, Captain. Two of which are queens,” answers the Asgardian.

“So we've killed three,” Steve says. “The secondary queen and two workers. That leaves nine: eight workers and the primary queen. There's probably at least one worker out here on point. Barton?”

Clint takes a quiver of Asgardian arrows from the weapons pile and slings it over his shoulder. The arrows are sharp enough (they hope) to pierce the alien exoskeletons and backed with a hefty explosive, and indicates a large pine tree with good lines of fire on the facility exits. “I'll be up there.”

Steve nods. “Soldier, switch your comm to the main channel. You okay for weapons?” he says, which earns him an inelegant snort from Clint. Even Natasha's mouth curls up in a hint of a smile. Bucky's in full Murder Porcupine mode, enough guns and knives on his person to take over a small country singlehandedly. The only thing missing from his usual combat kit was the semiautomatic he usually wore between his shoulder blades, because that spot was taken up by a giant Asgardian battle-axe.

He expects Bucky to nod. He doesn't expect Bucky to turn to Tony, reach out a hand, and say “Plasma cannon”, but that's what happens.

Tony shifts and grumbles. “What if I was planning to use that myself?”

The Soldier keeps his hand stretched out and adds a small head tilt. That mere five degrees difference in angle manages to express a sea of benign contempt.

Tony groans and passes over the cannon. “Okay, fine. _Fine_.”

The Soldier examines the stubby, heavy little cannon in his hands, then looks up at Tony and tilts his head again.

Tony waves his hand in the plasma cannon's general direction. “Recyc's down to three seconds. Insulation's a bit better too, and I added those handles because _some_ crazy bastard thinks it's okay to shoot it from the hip.”

The Soldier nods and slings the plasma cannon across his torso.

“You're _welcome_ ,” Tony huffs.

“Are we good now?” Steve says, his tone arch.

The Soldier very slowly, very deliberately, reaches down and picks up an Asgardian hunting spear. (Natasha has to walk away to hide an honest-to-God giggle.) “ _Now_ we're good,” comes the rough reply from behind the mask.

Then the Soldier steps away, preserving sight lines on all of them, and giving himself fighting room.

“I hate you all,” says Tony, as he unzips his snow suit. “I also hate winter. Southern California, now _there's_ a climate,” he mutters, tapping the dial of his watch. A metal box unpacks, and Tony's spare suit is soon flying around him, assembling itself.

Sam and Natasha grab Asgardian guns which shoot small fireballs. They look like flare pistols, but Thor swears they can burn a hole through almost anything. Tony grabs a spear, as do Steve and Thor. The infiltration crew is the five people least likely to be affected by any leftover radiation: Thor, Steve, the Soldier, Iron Man, and Bruce. Bruce hovers at the edge of the group, hunched and shivering slightly in loose layers of clothing, out of place as he always is in the chummy weapon-selection process. He _is_ his weapon.

Then another thing happens that Steve doesn't expect. The Soldier moves silently next to Banner. He doesn't say anything or look at Banner, just stands close enough next to him that their arms could almost touch. Banner looks over at the Soldier, at the plates of the metal arm as they recalibrate for battle, and the gamma-ray scientist draws himself up a little straighter, looking almost proud for a moment. _We, the monsters._

Steve feels something twist in his stomach, echoes of a loss so unfathomable it couldn't even be comprehended until it was found again. God, he's _missed_ having a sergeant.

“Natasha, set up a perimeter,” Steve orders, a grin spreading over his face. “Sam, you're on overwatch. Clint'll be covering the most likely exit with Nat on backup. Kill anything that comes out, that isn't us. Tony, you're on sweep with me while I lay explosives. Pay special attention to the rear--”

“That's what your momma said--”

“ _Stark_. My mother was a saint,” Steve retorts.

“So was mine,” Tony says, his eyes cutting over to the Soldier's. The bastard doesn't even look away, just stares back at him, blank behind that mask and goggles.

“The Soldier's on point for this as he knows the layout. He'll take you to the reactors, to where we think the queen is. Thor, Bruce, you follow his lead. Any questions?”

There's no sound but the whistle of the wind in the pine trees.

“Okay, then,” Steve nods, slinging the heavy pack of explosives onto his back. “Avengers, let's go.”

Sam's wings flash open, silver and crimson, and soon he's in the air, riding an updraft high above the factory. The Soldier is already walking down hill, towards the main entrance, as if he hasn't got a care in the world. Strolling towards Armageddon with that panther-like strut of his. Thor strides behind, and Tony finally picks up Bruce and carries him, like a very rumpled bride, behind. But the Soldier's moving too slow for Tony, so Tony zips up to the gate, fries it open, circles back once around the infiltration crew of the Soldier, Thor and Steve, leaves them again, zips up to the actual complex door, blows that open, and then settles down with a sigh on the cracked pavement, putting Bruce back on his feet.

Tony stares inside, at the wide hallway that quickly disappears into darkness, at the blood-red stripe on the walls, the strange slimy reflectiveness of the floor. The _dripping_. “Well, that's--” Tony begins.

Then the pavement underneath him cracks and explodes outwards, and long claws reach out from the ensuing hole to grab Tony's legs, dragging him into darkness.

“Fuck!” Sam shouts as the comms fill with the sounds of Tony's cursing and his repulsor blasts. “Cap--”

The Soldier doesn't speed up; nor does he slow down. He just tosses his spear to Thor, aims the plasma cannon at a point about 20 feet in front of him and blasts a hole in the ground. He walks straight at the hole and then he, too, disappears underground. Steve hurtles in after him. The last thing he sees before he passes into darkness is Bruce, digging huge, green hands into the hole where Tony disappeared.

Thor lands softly behind them and whistles twice: once, short and sharp, to alert the Soldier he was tossing back his spear, and another time, a strange little melody, to cause all the spear-heads and Mjolnir's head to glow a soft blue. The light is enough for enhanced eyes to see about thirty feet. The tunnel is wide enough to drive a truck down easily, the floor grooved with sunken rails. The sides of the tunnel are covered with bundled electrical cabling and pipes, all of it dripping with water that smelled of rotten leaves and rancid aluminium.

Bursts of repulsor fire light up the tunnel in jagged blasts about 200 feet away, revealing the alien that is battering at Tony's Iron Man suit with its tail, trying to pierce the arc reactor in his chest. The Soldier is watching it, leaning forwards in a predator's slouch as he holds his flesh hand out to keep Thor and Steve behind him. It's a tough call: Tony and the alien are moving so fast that any ranged weapon that could take out the alien would be at risk of taking Tony out too.

The Soldier's hand gestures: Stay here. The other hand, the metal one, switches its grip on the long spear. When Thor and Steve stop moving, the Soldier draws one of his knives from a thigh holster and puts the handle between his teeth. The Soldier's about fifty feet away from the alien that's doing its level best to suck Tony out of his suit like a crawfish, and is just... prowling forwards. Steve stutters, wanting to move, not seeing a plan.

Then the Soldier brings his forearm, the flesh one, across the blade of the knife he's holding in his teeth. Steve can smell the sudden coppery tang of blood in the air.

So can the alien.

It scents, hissing, and flings Tony across the hall with its tail as it turns. Tony smacks into a wall and is slow to rise, broken cables sparking and cracked pipes gasping out steam behind him. But the alien doesn't pursue its advantage. All its attention is now on the delicious smell of bleeding meat coming towards it.

It rushes its meal.

This is, in retrospect, a terrible decision.

For that is exactly what the meal _expected_ it to do.

The speed is almost too much for non-enhanced eyes to parse, the alien shooting forwards, all three mouths extending and dripping ichor, as the Soldier – at what seems the last possible moment, Steve quivering in panicked desperation, ready to throw down the heavy pack of explosives he's carrying and shove Bucky aside – at the last possible moment, the Soldier drops down into a half-kneel, spear braced under his arm, and becomes still.

Its breastbone thuds into the crossbar before the alien is even fully aware it has three feet of Asgardian hunting spear sticking out of it. It screams then, a screeching horror out of the vastness of space, and thrashes, trying to free itself, trying to hurt the thing that is hurting it, trying to budge the spear. Acid from its wounds sprays in arcs in the hallway, hissing against pipe insulation and causing the stains on the cement floor to bubble into acrid smoke.

But the spear does not move.

The Soldier is so still he may as well be carved from stone. He waits. There is no need to expend further effort. The alien will die; its spasms are already slowing, becoming less severe.

Steve is about to step forwards and administer a coup de grâce when the second alien drops onto the Soldier from above, from a gap in the ceiling pipes barely wide enough for a cat.

The Soldier rolls, a microsecond before the alien gets him, and then they're locked, metal arm around throat carapace, acid dripping onto tac gear, concentric mouths extending closer and closer to the Soldier's muzzle. The Soldier's other hand is feeling for the discarded plasma cannon, but the strap is tangled, snagged on something, and it's not coming. The alien's tail whips forwards as Tony empties repulsor blasts into the alien's center of mass; Thor is readying his own spear and Steve is about to let fly with his shield when a large green arm emerges out of the darkness and grabs the alien's head, ripping and twisting it off.

“ _Space bug not hurt Hulk friend!_ ” comes the roar, which is all the warning Thor and Steve have before the alien's torn-off head comes flying down the tunnel, flung with a pace and attitude that would make a major-league pitcher, well, _green_ with envy.

The Soldier rolls gracefully to his feet, kicks the decapitated, still-twitching alien body to the side, and throws the Hulk a respectful salute.

The Hulk grins and salutes back.

Steve shakes his head, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. He's now officially seen everything.

“Okay, that was pretty badass,” Tony says, as the Soldier pulls his spear out of the other dead alien. “I'm not going to feel like one of the cool kids until I kill one of these things too, y'know.”

“Six left, plus the queen. You'll get your turn,” the Soldier rumbles. He unslings the plasma cannon from his hip and hangs the strap over Tony's head as he walks past, like Iron Man was nothing more than a very gaudy coat-rack. “Here.”

Tony lifts the plasma cannon, and makes a noise of inquiry at the Soldier's broad back as he strides down the tunnel.

The Soldier doesn't respond, just pulls the heavy Asgardian axe out of its sheath and holds it in the air.

Tony snorts and looks down at the plasma cannon again.

Then he looks at Steve, walking past him. “Are we being--?” Tony says. “Is he--?”

“Yup,” Steve smiles.

“Huh,” Tony says softly, gazing off after the Soldier. “I'll be damned. Sergeant Barnes.”

“Yup,” Steve says. Tony always was quick on the uptake.

“You going to stop grinning like an idiot anytime soon?” Tony groans.

“Nope,” Steve says.

Steve pats the Hulk's shoulder and points upwards. “It's a little cramped for you in here, big guy. You want to go up and smash all the above-ground stuff? Clear out anything above the surface?”

“Hulk smash!” comes the response, those green-brown eyes bright with excitement. Then those eyes narrow, and a huge index finger pokes at the star on Steve's chest. “You take care of Hulk friend.”

“I promise,” Steve says.

The Hulk nods, then quads down the tunnel to the gaping hole that had been created by the alien first and widened by him, and catapults himself monkey-like out into the indifferent sunlight of the Siberian morning. Soon, there's the sound of masonry crashing to the ground.

Steve and Tony soon catch up to where the Soldier and Thor wait for them, at a branch in the tunnel. It's cold, and damp, with the drip-drip-drip of leaking pipes masking other sounds, and the dim glow of the Asgardian spear-heads still leaving a forest of shadows where evil could hide. Steve shivers despite himself. None of this is good. He has a team made up of the greatest fighters the Earth has ever known, and all he can do is hope it's enough.

The left fork of the tunnel descends deeper into the Earth; the right remains level. There's not much difference in terms of direction, only of grade: the two branches appear to go broadly parallel.

The Soldier points his axe at the left fork. “Reactors,” he says, the sound dampened by the muzzle over the lower half of his face. Then he does something unexpected: hands his spear off to Thor, unbuckles the muzzle with his free hand, and takes a few steps into the descending tunnel.

It takes Steve a moment, then he realises: Bucky is scenting the air. _Hydra's hunting dog_ , Steve's brain supplies. The hellhound on the trail.

The Soldier turns. “Queen,” he says, as he replaces the muzzle over his face. “And a fuckton of eggs.” He looks at Steve, waiting for command. (And that shouldn't cause a spark in Steve's groin, especially not now, but it does. It _does_.)

“What's this way?” Steve asks, pointing towards the other tunnel.

“Maintenance. Labs. Cells.” The Soldier shifted. “Plenty of air ducts and piping that an alien could slip through from those levels to the reactor area.”

“Then we attack on two fronts,” Steve says. He fishes into his pack of explosives and pulls a five-charge set, handing them off to Bucky. “Soldier, Thor, take down the Queen and wire the area to blow. Tony, we're clearing the upper levels.”

The Soldier nods, and fades away like a ghost into the darkness of the tunnel. Thor still has the Soldier's spear as well as his own, and Steve has a moment of discomfort about that. He shakes his head, clearing the traitorous thought. Bucky knows what he's doing.

Thor raises the two spears in acknowledgement to Steve, and with a, “Go well, Captain, and may the fates be with you!” he too disappears into the darkness of the descending tunnel.

Steve and Tony work their way along the right-hand tunnel, Jarvis scanning for any signs of life ahead of them. But the aliens seem to be cold-blooded, taking on the ambient temperature, and so if they remain still it is extraordinarily hard to detect them. Every off-pattern drip, every random clank or bang of an old pipe, becomes the prelude to an attack. By the time they reach the first chamber, Steve is exhausted from flinching. Mentally exhausted. The serum keeps his body ready for action, but his mind is beginning to fray in the cavernous darkness of this remote, abandoned base.

The room he and Tony find themselves in is some sort of combination checkpoint / parade area, large enough to park a few vehicles or muster a platoon or two. There's a dark stripe around the wall, the colour of congealed blood, and strangely fussy light fixtures. Beyond, a number of smaller hallways and rooms spiderweb out into the complex.

Tony sighs, long and loud, and lights the place up wth his suit.

Steve squints at the sudden burst of light, then reaches into his pack and attaches three charges around the room, ensuring that the exit tunnel will be cut off when the place blows. He'd always loved _Weird Tales_ as a kid, especially the creepy haunted house stories of people like Lovecraft. He loved to laugh at the stupid people in the story. Why didn't they just leave? Why did they go investigate the eerie noise? And now he was in a haunted reactor complex / former Hydra base, and he couldn't leave. The tales weren't so funny any more.

A pipe clanka behind them, and Steve crouches, ready to fling his shield.

Tony sighs again and walked towards the nearest hallway. It led to a warren of small storage rooms: boxed equipment, faded labels in dusty cyrillic on damp-bowed shelves. “So, Steve,” Tony says, picking up something that could be either motor oil or baked beans judging by its can size. “Is it true the crazy ones are always fantastic in bed? Asking for a friend. Because, you know, in _my_ experience--”

“He's not crazy, Tony. He's just... different,” Steve grunts, slinging the bag of explosives back over his shoulder.

“Are you seriously arguing for non-neurotypical?” Tony says, striding over to grab a five-pack of charges.

Steve shields his eyes. “Tony, can you shift that to red spectrum so you don't kill my night vision?”

“Oh, sorry,” Tony says, and the light emitting from the suit changes hue. “I can also do disco lights, but even in my serious MDMA-hoovering days I wouldn't have danced to the beat of _pipes dripping_.” He pauses. “Actually, yeah, who am I trying to kid. I totally would have. But anyway. Your--”

“Tony, ssh,” Steve hisses.

“I'm just saying, it would be fascinating to study his brain patterns when he's gone full Soldier like this compared to when he's only his normal psychopathic self, if that wasn't likely to result in certain death for everyone involved--”

“Tony! Shut up!” Steve says, a little louder. He indicates down a small, secondary hallway. “There's... there's _something_. A noise.”

Tony shuts up, and directs his gaze into the darkness of the narrow passage. There's...

“Someone's crying,” Tony whispers.

“Yeah,” Steve nods, rising to his feet.

“But I'm not picking up any vital signs, or heat signatures,” Tony says.

“it sounds like a woman,” Steve whispers, as he heads into the hallway.

He pitches his voice a little louder. “Hello? Is there anybody there?”

 

* * *

 

The Soldier is silent as he leads the Asgardian prince down towards the reactor cores. Thor doesn't talk to him, and doesn't try to touch him, which means so far everything is going better than expected. The smell of the queen and her eggs -- rotten crab shells and spoilt coconut milk -- is overwhelming, even through his muzzle. He's thankful for the dark of the tunnel, as it means visual stimulation is at a manageable level. He is left with listening, trying to catch patterns in the drip-drip-drip of the pipes that might not be pipes, that might be aliens.

The Soldier knows that in this compound, in an unmarked area off the other tunnel, is a cell that used to be his home.

It is reinforced, with chains and manacles built to withstand even his strength.

As cells go, it was far from his worst.

But the screaming void within him calls to fill the halls with alien blood and fire, and he shall.

...there is a twinge at the edge of his consciousness. Strange music, in harmonics not known on this world, and an offer of coolness, and peace.

The Soldier doesn't realise he has stopped, until he hears Thor's voice, surprisingly soft. “Soldier?”

He pushes the feeling away. He's good at that. Nobody gets far into his mind, any more. He grunts, and swings the Asgardian battle axe, stretching out the muscles of his flesh arm, as he walks past Thor.

They can see the entrance to the main reactor bays. The blast doors have been pushed open, a jagged, 3' gap between them. The faint, sickly luminescent glow of alien eggs shines beyond. The Soldier is almost to the doors when--

 _it_ skitters down the cement floor at them from the way they had come, lightning-fast, sports-car fast. The hiss of acid follows it.

“Go!” barks Thor, hefting one spear, tossing the other to the Soldier. “I have this one.”

There's no time to argue, or even for the Soldier to fire a grenade. Thor doesn't get the spear set in time.

The spearhead misses the vital parts of the charging alien, slicing only a superficial gouge across a shoulder carapace and nicking one of the strange bone knobs that rise from its back. The alien doesn't slow as it barrels into Thor, knocking him onto his back, claws tearing into him.

The Soldier sees the hammer flying into Thor's hand; the fight computer in his head calculates the swing from that hammer that will cave in the alien's skull. The Asgardian prince is unlikely to die. The Soldier steps through the blast doors and leaves him to his fight.

The reactor room is full of eggs, glowing from within the colour of diseased flesh, angry pink welts like puckered crosses at their tops. The Queen is not among them, so the Soldier looks up.

A shadow skitters across the ceiling. The Queen.

It is massive, twice the size of any of the other aliens. The Soldier regrets, momentarily, giving up the plasma cannon. He grips the handle of the axe with both hands and settles his weight low, and waits for the inevitable.

And then it is upon him, descending from the ceiling, all claws and teeth and clicking carapace, malignant and hungry.

The Soldier swings the axe and, just before it bites into the neck of the alien queen, the music begins again, seeping into him from all sides, a tide where before it had been a rivulet.

The Soldier finds that the music... does not hinder him. It describes the world around him, as if he could see everything, even that which was behind him.

The axe sings a song of battle, and the Soldier listens.

In the song there is no rage. There is no void. There is just peace, and the giving of death.

* * *

Steve continues down the corridor, towards the weeping sound. He's in another area now, one that didn't seem to tally with the maps they had of the compound. An area that shouldn't exist. He doesn't give it much thought; Hydra's cartography was always a somewhat fictional exercise. Steel doors, mostly rotted off their hinges, line the corridor, and behind the doors seem... cells? The weeping comes from the furthest one, from a door far thicker than the others, standing open.

He raises his shield and sets the spear. He is no fool, and knows the chances of there being another human in the compound other than the Avengers is beyond unlikely.

So when the alien comes out of the room whip-fast, still making its strange keening sound, its claws do little more than send sparks off the vibranium of his shield. It's like being hit by a speeding truck though; a dump truck full of rotten crab shells.

He's knocked backwards into the opposite wall of the corridor and the spear shatters, its head sticking through the thorax of the alien. But the alien is over him, climbing over the shield, and the third row of teeth sinks into Steve's shoulder, acid pouring into his muscles like fire. Steve clubs the alien's extended mouth with the splintered end of the spear, feeling more than seeing the bone rings of its mouth structure crunch and cave in. It hangs on to his shoulder, though, tenacious beyond sense, beyond sanity. Distantly, he can hear Tony appoaching, the heavy tread of the Iron Man suit echoing ahead of him.

Steve grits his teeth and drops the spear, bracing his other hand against the shield and shoving. He feels the muscle and flesh being ripped free in his shoulder and then finally, the alien is separate from him. He rams it against the heavy steel door and the alien doesn't even flinch; Steve feels rather than sees the tail that flips around and begins to circle his waist, winding up towards his chest. He remembers the Russian villagers, alien spawn feeding off their lungs, the double heartbeat of the parasite host. He shudders and steps back to turn his shield and smash the alien again.

“Steve!” Tony yells. “Down!”

Steve crouches, bringing the edge of the shield down on the alien's tail as he goes. He feels the heat of the plasma cannon blast over his back, feels the kevlar of his uniform burn and twist, and barely gets his shield up in time as flaming acid and shards of carapace explode around him.

He shakes himself like a dog as he stands, picking the still-twitching severed alien tail off him. Even in death, it continues to stab towards his chest. Jesus, Steve thinks. Do these things _ever_ give up? He raises a hand in thanks to Tony, at the other end of the hall.

“Y'know,” Tony says, “I never thought I'd be saying this, but Murder Boyfriend is right. Shooting this cannon from the hip is _fun_.”

Steve's shoulder hurts like a motherfucker. There's still residual acid chewing away at the wound, keeping it from healing. But he snorts, a ridiculous fondness flowing through him like a warm tide. “Yeah, well. He's really good at things relating to murder.”

“Murder Boyfriend. Clue's in the name,” Tony says, stepping backwards into the claws of another alien.

Steve rushes down the corridor to help Tony. He doesn't think before he goes to look in the cell at the end, behind that extra-heavy steel door. So he doesn't see the manacles. Misses the drain in the floor. The bloodstains so frequent and prevalent they had set into the cement of the walls and floor, a permanent stain. A record of the making of a Soldier.

* * *

Sam circles a safe distance above the Hulk as he tears through what seems to be a medical block. Not that the Hulk would deliberately hurt him, but the Hulk did enjoy a jolly good smash, and sometimes got a bit enthusiastic flinging bricks. It was like Sam's 3-year-old cousin Omar, but with huge pieces of masonry rather than Lego bricks.

As the Hulk stomped on the hallway joining the medical wing to the main building, two black shadows darted out, splitting and heading thwards the treeline.

The Hulk sees, and immediately gives chase, shaking snow off pine trees with his thundering steps. But the aliens are built for speed, whereas a Hulk is mostly built for smash. They outpace him almost immediately, and he doesn't help his cause by starting to chase one, then giving up and going to chase the other.

“Natasha!” Sam shouts into his comms. “Two hostiles, one north-northwest, one southerly!”

“Yep, see 'em,” whispers Clint, from whatever tree he's in.

“A hawk for the hacksaw, and we'll take the southerly one,” Natasha says back, slipping off her perch, shouldering a spear, and running towards the alien she'd called dibs on.

“Falcons are not hawks. Totally different wing shape,” Sam grumps, mostly to hide his little thrill of excitement from finally getting to use the cool Asgardian fireball guns strapped to his hips. But also because _really_ , what sort of idiot could mistake a hawk for a falcon?

“Steve, Thor, report?” Natasha calls into the comms as she lopes across the snowy ground towards the southerly alien. It sees her, and changes course to engage. Natasha is briefly appreciative of the alien race's sheer bloodthirst. Most everything, given the choice, will flee from conflict. These insect-creatures run towards it, hungry for violence.

“Four down on our side,” Steve reports. “We're almost done setting charges.” He sounds tired, Natasha thinks. There's the catch in his voice he uses when he's pretending he's not hurt.

“Injuries?”

“Nothing major,” Steve says. “Tony's suit is damaged. Gonna need some help getting him out.”

Uh- _huh_ , Natasha thinks. “Thor?”

“I will come and provide that help, Captain. I have vanquished one alien, at some cost, and the Soldier is duelling the Queen.”

There was a pregnant hesitation on the comms.

“Captain, we have warriors like him on Asgard. He would not appreciate help from someone other than his shield-mate.”

“He does actually have comms,” Sam says, circling in front of “his” alien and drawing the Asgardian pistols. “He can express what he damn wants like a grownup. Soldier? You good, or you want help?”

There's the sound of Steve sighing over the comms.

“Soldier? Come in?” Sam tries. He lines up his shot on the alien and begins his dive.

“He won't... answer,” Steve says, sounding exhausted. “And you're probably right about the help.”

“I'm on my way to you, Captain,” says Thor.

“Okay, so with the two we've found and the Queen, that leaves one bogey still at large,” Natasha says. She sets the spear and crouches as the alien closes on her. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the glint of fire jet across the sky: Sam, certainly, and his guns.

Her alien is racing towards her at about 40 miles an hour. Once again, Natasha is impressed at the sheer viciousness of the race; an entire species evolved to consume and destroy and breed as fast as they possibly could. The savage locusts of deep space. She braces.

The hit never comes. Just as the alien is in front of her spear, its head explodes in acid and fire. Two more exploding Asgardian arrows thunk into its back, and Natasha ducks and rolls away before those go off.

“Sorry, babe, I just...” Clint mutters. “Those things scare the fuck out of me. Didn't like it so close to you.”

“I can _handle_ it,” Natasha says, her voice low and sharp like a blade.

“I know you can,” Clint breathes. “I know.”

Sam streaks into a dive and fires again at his alien. Damn thing dodged his first blast. He doesn't know what the range is on the fancy-ass alien guns but he figures closer is better. He pulls up at the last moment, stomach flipping at the sharp change in velocity, and looses blasts at damn near point-blank range. The alien whirls, the first blast catching it in the shoulder, the second blowing off half its skull. But its tail comes around, neatly destroying one of his wings and yanking him sideways into a shitty, half-dead pine tree.

Sam feels the back of his head connect with the tree, the sudden hot rush of blood in his hair and then the shivering cold of a head wound, and slips downwards. The alien leans over him. Well, aliens. Several blurry, wavering aliens. His vision might be not great. Just before he goes unconscious, he sprays fire at them all. Something heavy and stinking falls on him, twitching, and there's the stench and hiss of acid eating into his armour. Then, darkness.

“Shit! Sam's out,” Natasha calls. “Any sign of the last alien?”

The Hulk helpfully picks up the roof of a shed and looks inside. No alien.

Natasha runs to Sam's side, kicking the alien's corpse off him. She bends down to snap him out of his wingpack, tangled as it was in the low branches of a Siberian pine.

Steve's voice comes over the comms. “We're all set with charges. Thor's not here yet. Thor?”

“The last alien, Captain. It surprised me. I have vanquished it, but at cost to myself and... and the tunnel.”

“What are you saying?” Steve replies, his voice steely.

“Mjolnir. I... the tunnel leading to the Queen's chamber is collapsed. I am on your side of it. Your shield-mate is on the other.”

“Fuck,” Steve hisses. “Thor, get Tony out. I'm taking the plasma cannon and going after Bucky. Natasha, I've set the remote detonator. This place is coming down in five minutes. Get everyone back.”

“Steve--” Natasha begins.

“Five minutes,” Steve says. “There's still a ton of eggs in the Queen's chamber. We're finishing this.”

“Okay. What exit are you coming out of? We'll--” Natasha begins, then sighs when she hears the sound of a comms unit being crushed. “Hulk! Help me carry Sam to safety,” she yells.

Three minutes later, Thor and Tony stagger out. Thor had been injected in his spine with the toxin in the alien's tail. He's the weakest Natasha has ever seen him, shivering and vomiting. They all make it up to high ground with ten seconds to spare. All of them except Steve and the Soldier, who do not emerge.

Steve had given himself 300 seconds to run down into the reactor room and rescue the love of his life.

It's not enough.

 

* * *

 

The building blows.

The concussive blast - hot air, soot, dust and melted snow – slams into the Avengers as they watch from the hilltop outside the gates.

“Does anyone see Steve?” Natasha asks, once the flare of heat and light and pressure has died down again. She sounds calm, but there's the tiniest waver in her voice and Clint reaches out to put a hand on her shoulder. She huffs in annoyance, but leans fractionally in to the comfort he offers.

“I can't pick up anything on infrared,” Tony says. “Lemme see if motion tracking is any better.”

“He's gonna make it,” Sam says, woozily repeating it like a litany. “He always makes it. He's _gonna_ make it.”

“They better _both_ make it,” Natasha whispers. “Do you have any idea what will happen if one of them loses the other one? The _best_ possible endgame in either case is the survivor kills himself.”

“Come on, you fucking asshole,” Clint whispers.

For a long minute, the former compound is nothing but billows of grey-black smoke and the horrible grinding sounds of secondary collapses and settling masonry.

“I got something,” Tony whispers. “At your 1:30. Please don't be a fucking alien.”

“No,” Natasha says, scanning the area with her binos. “It's them. It's _both of them_.”

Soon enough they can see it with their naked eyes: Steve and the Soldier, slumped against each other, stumbling out of the smoke. They're burned and soot-covered, the slick red of significant wounds showing through jagged rips in their uniforms. Bucky is still wearing his mask and goggles, and the Asgardian battleaxe is slung over his back. Steve's got his shield on his own back. They have their arms slung around each other, Bucky's metal arm supporting Steve probably more than either of them will later admit.

Sam sticks his fingers in his mouth and whistles, loud. He waves at Cap and the Soldier and motions them over. “We're up here!”

But the Soldier just glares up at Sam with that blank expression, everything hidden behind the muzzle and the goggles, and then steers Steve deliberately away, towards the small gatehouse next to the cracked, overgrown road into the complex. The Soldier shoves Steve inside the guardhouse, then unslings the battleaxe and swings it with a frightening amount of force, embedding it in the stone wall surrounding the compound. Steve comes stomping out of the gatehouse, sans shield. He puts his hands on his hips and yells something at the Soldier, who turns, all cold, graceful menace.

That's when the fog in Sam's head clears, and he realises that while they might have been clinging onto each other for dear life moments ago, they're also both _furious_. And Mrs Wilson didn't raise no fools. Sam is not going _anywhere_ near the fight clearly brewing between the two super-soldiers. Last time that happened he got drop-kicked off a fucking helicarrier and he maybe hasn't forgiven Barnes for that as much as he claims. Not like the Soldier had even apologised properly; he'd just smirked and made a joke about brain damage.

“Okay,” Sam says, limping back towards the snowmobiles where there better be some goddamn protein bars or something, or maybe bourbon, bourbon would be _great_. “I think Steve and Crazy Eyes need some alone time. Who else wants to join me in getting as far away from that as possible?”

“Nah, they're not--” says Clint, watching Steve and the Soldier through Nat's binos. “Aw, Soldier, no!”

“What?” Tony asks.

“He just slapped the _shit_ out of Cap.”

 

* * *

 

“The fuck you think you were doing?” the Soldier hisses at Steve, backing him up against the cement wall of the guardhouse.

“Saving your ungrateful fucking life, you idiot!” Steve shouts back, fists balled. “What part of blowing the building didn't you understand?”

“The part where the Queen was still alive,” the Soldier growls, placing his hands on the wall, either side of Steve's head, caging him in. “Do not push me right now, Steve. You don't know what you're dealing with.”

“I can handle it. I can handle y _ou_.” Steve says, his voice icy.

“No you can't,” the Soldier snorts. “Also has it ever occurred to you that this is not the _first_ time I've had a building dropped on me? Jesus, I've dropped three or four on myself. I have a metal arm--” and metal fingers flex against the wall, the cement popping and powdering underneath-- “I was going to create a space for myself and then dig out later, when I was sure the Queen was dead.”

“Then maybe you shouldn't have acted like a _diva_ and pulled your comms out--”

The Soldier drops his voice and sticks his muzzled face into Steve's, muscles in his arms and torso flexing as he bends in close. Barely an inch separates their mouths. An inch, and a reinforced tactical muzzle. Steve can feel the heat radiating off the warrior his friend grew into as he snarls, rough and low, “I have worked alone for 70. Fucking. Years. I had a mission: destroy the Queen and her brood. I do not fail missions. Thus there is no point in communicating progress.”

“Buck--”

“You should have _trusted_ that I would get out. _Hydra_ trusted me.”

“Hydra didn't care if you got out in one piece,” Steve swallows, his throat suddenly thick. “I do.” He looks at the blank, muzzled face thrust into his, the hard angles of the leather-clad apex predator tensed over him, and he's hit with a surge of desire so strong that his legs nearly go out from under him.

He squeezes his eyes shut and presses his back against the cold cement wall, trying to get himself under control as his lust burns and twists within him. Everything his rational mind tells him should be repulsive, everything which terrifies normal, sane people about Bucky, about the Soldier... it turns Steve on until his blood boils and flames within him. The muzzle. The straps. The ruthless, emotionless precision with which he fights. The _power_.

And the Soldier _knows_. Of course he fucking knows. He can smell Steve's arousal, even through the filters which deaden his ultra-sharp senses down to something manageable. He leans forward another half inch – his mask is _so_ close to Steve's lips – and next to his ear, Steve can hear the wall powdering further as the metal hand digs into it. The look the Soldier is giving him is clinical, assessing, as much as Steve can parse it through the terrifying blankness of his mask. It's turning Steve's blood into effervescent fire in his veins. His skin is hypersensitive, yearning for touch--

Then a flesh hand, calloused and large and covered in worn leather, palms Steve's erection through his suit.

Steve moans a litany of curses, _Jesus fuck yes Bucky god yes_ , and arches himself into that touch. His hands move without conscious thought to rest on the Soldier's hard, leather-wrapped waist. He's exhausted from saving the world and dizzy with relief and he's in some shitty grey guardhouse in a forgotten corner of Siberia watching his darkest, most shameful sexual fantasy snarl over him. Watching it reach down with a metal hand and unbutton his uniform trousers.

He presses his lips to the Soldier's muzzle and whispers into it. “Buck, Jesus Christ, you don't know what it does to me when you're like this, I just... fuck me, please, fuck me like this with your mask and tac suit and... please just do it.” He feels the hot blush of shame to his cheeks as he says those words but he doesn't care, this is all he wants, and he has wanted it for _so_ long.

At first the Soldier doesn't answer. Then a metal hand slides around the back of Steve's neck and turns him, forcing him down, bending him face-first over a metal table bolted to the floor of the guardhouse. Forces him as if he were still the undersize Brooklyn runt he was before Erskine. And Steve shudders and moans with how _good_ it feels to have the Soldier using him, using Erskine's great big body that everyone is afraid of, as if it meant nothing to him.

 

* * *

“Clint Francis Barton, do you _want_ to die?” Natasha hisses.

“Gah, Tash! No!” he whimpers, from behind a tree about 10 feet from the guardhouse, fumbling his cameraphone into a snowbank. “Don't sneak up on me like that!”

“I wasn't sneaking up on _you_ , I was sneaking up on _them_ to get to you, _idiot_ ” she whispers back, eyes narrowing. She grabs Clint's sleeve. “We're going back to the snowmobiles. _Now_.”

As Natasha drags Clint away from the guardhouse where Bucky and Steve had definitely progressed beyond arguing, she mutters, “Of all the stupid things you have done in your life, this may be the absolute stupidest.”

Then she glares back at him, eys narrowed. “Did you get any photos?”

“Yeah,” Clint smirks. “'bout three.”

Natasha makes happy noises in her throat as she puts Clint into a modified headlock and hauls him by his neck up the hill, towards the others.

 

* * *

Steve's breath is hitching in short little gasps as his chest is pressed onto the metal table top. He can't help the little whimpers and cries coming out of his mouth, which seem all the more loud for the Soldier's complete silence. The table's icy temperature starts to seep through Steve's torn Captain America suit, making his nipples harden even further. The hand on the back of his neck doesn't let up at all, and Steve shuts his eyes and thinks of Bucky's cold, balletic grace fighting the aliens, his ruthless precision. How he moved like an unstoppable, implacable force. Steve is completely hard, his cock uncomfortable against the restriction of his tight uniform pants, and he rolls his hips slightly to try to adjust himself.

There's a low, muffled growl from the Soldier.

Heavy boots kick his feet apart and a rough hand peels his uniform trousers down to just under his ass. Steve can smell the dull tang of gun oil and then there's Bucky's – the Soldier's – thumb skating down the cleft of his ass. Not pressing into him yet, just against him. Steve is shivering with need, trying to push himself back against Bucky's thumb. He's not even keeping track of the filth spilling out of his mouth, all variations on _fuck me_ and _I need you_ and _please I'll be good make me good_.

The metal hand holds him tighter, shaking him slightly, then pressing his neck and head onto the cold metal table to stop his movement. Then the muzzle, that hard/soft muzzle, is nuzzling up near the sensitive spot in Steve's neck. No, not nuzzling – it's just _there_ , Steve can hear the Soldier's breath, still maddeningly slow and even despite his obvious arousal. The Soldier is assessing, calculating. Can he do with sex what he instinctually does at this point with violence? Work out probabilities, plans of attack? Steve whimpers and tries to lift his head so he can feel that muzzle against him.

The Soldier pulls himself away and Steve wants to cry. But then suddenly his flesh hand grabs at Steve's hip and ass, hard enough to bruise, spreading him. Steve gasps as he feels the Soldier's cock, hot and hard, press against him. He tries to shove himself back on it but the metal hand on his neck just tightens. Steve is so turned on he can barely control his own body. He feels like a live wire, full of electricity, as if the slightest touch will make him explode. _Please_ , Steve says, _please now, please_.

And there's a soft exhalation, which Steve can feel through the muzzle that once again presses at his hairline as the Soldier's flesh hand runs almost reverently down his side. Steve is conscious of just how much that small action means, with Bucky this deep into... into what he becomes. He knows that _affection_ isn't one of the emotions that is kept. He hadn't even been sure if the Soldier was _able_ to become aroused... and yet, the evidence is there, wet with pre-come and gun oil, pressing against him. The hand that is kneading his ass stops and circles up to his hip, fingers grabbing on hard.

And Steve hisses in pain and pleasure as the Soldier pushes into him. His own cock twitches, dripping, hanging heavy in the air just in front of the table edge. Steve braces his hands against that edge, braces for the assault he fears (hopes) will come once Bucky is inside him.

He's burning up, blushing and panting, muscles in his legs shivering from Bucky's pressure inside him. Steve can feel the leather straps and metal buckles of Bucky's tac vest pressed against his back, the uniform doing little to soften the feel of the rock-hard body inside the vest; the coarse combat trousers, crossed with straps and sheaths, abrading his bare ass. The heavy breathing through the muzzle. Normally, Bucky would take his time, relax Steve, check in with him. Pull him apart slowly, expertly, and enjoy every moment of bringing Steve to a state where he couldn't say his own name.

But that isn't what Steve wants right now. It isn't what he asked for. The Soldier just pushes into him in short, hard little thrusts, sinking in half an inch at a time, until he's fully seated within Steve.

The metal table is cold against Steve's cheek but everything else is burning hot, and he's stretched and full but still vibrating with need. Thank God there isn't anything touching his cock, Steve thinks, as he's so on the edge right now any friction at all would send him tumbling over.

Bucky's left hand leaves his neck and rubs down his spine, the action itself a question. “Yes,” Steve moans. _“Yes.”_

Bucky stills for a moment. And then he _snarls_ , and it's the most terrifying sound Steve has ever heard. It's not human. It's not even in the same neighborhood as human. Steve's whole body shivers involuntarily before Bucky drops all his weight on him and starts hammering into him, growling into his ear the entire time. It burns and Steve thinks he might be bleeding and then Bucky adjusts his angle slightly and smashes against Steve's prostate and it's like he's one of those big white fireworks, his favourite kind, that explode out across the night sky, each tendril sparking and fizzing as it burns up. Steve moans and jerks, or tries to, under the body that is keeping him immobilised, _using_ him. And the hot, electric whiteness expands in his brain, wiping out the pain and the anxiety and the exhaustion and leaving only pleasure, pushing him out of his own head, up into the air, up somewhere else.

Steve is floating on waves of pleasure, even though he knows the Soldier is fucking him almost viciously, hard and fast and animalistic. He feels a surge of love for Bucky, for what he thinks might be the _real_ Bucky, the one that's left once you take away all the veils until there is nothing left except _what_ _survived_. All he can think as he rides the edge of an orgasm, an edge that is pushing him up higher and higher than he's ever gone, is how perfect this is, how much he loves the man that is doing this to him, how much this is everything he fantasised about and _more_ \--

Then the Soldier releases his death-grip on Steve's hip. The brutal, punishing pace with which Bucky is thrusting into him doesn't falter, but Steve dimly hears the muzzle drop onto the table next to him... and then Bucky's hand reaches around and grabs Steve's cock. He starts stroking Steve off, in rough accompaniment to the rhythm with which he's ramming into Steve's ass. Steve gasps, arcing his back up off the table into Bucky, trying to press closer, touch more of them together. The weight of him, the solid, vicious weight of Bucky, his hot breath on Steve's cheek as he bites and kisses at Steve's neck, is the only thing keeping Steve together right now. Without it he's not sure he'd ever come back to his body. The wave is so high, higher than he's ever been before.

The Soldier's rhythm staggers, and he curses in Russian as he forcefully thrusts home a couple last times, and it's the swearing, coarse and low in his ear, that sends Steve over the precipice and he's falling, and somewhere dimly he can feel pain, but it's fine, it's reminding him where his body is so he can find it again, and he falls through light and eternity and life and he has never felt so good, so complete, and then black is creeping in around the edges of his eyes, closing in, and then there is nothing--

 

–-only darkness--

 

\--His back is cold.

 

Nobody is touching him.

 

Steve stands up, then lurches as the whole room seems to tilt, dizziness sending him staggering into the table. His hipbone twangs against it, the dull protest of the disturbed metal echoing in the little cement guardroom.

He leans against the table and reaches down to pull up his uniform trousers. It's then he feels the searing pain at the top of his shoulder, on his right trapezius, opposite the mark the alien tore into his left shoulder. He touches the spot and his fingers come back red. He looks around.

Bucky is sitting on the floor in the corner, facing away from him. Knees pulled up to his chin, arms around his legs. He's shaking, or as much as he'll let himself shake, tiny involuntary tremors that Steve can see in the muscles at the back of his neck.

“I'm sorry, Steve.” he says without turning around. He sighs and ducks his head. “I should just get a t-shirt that says _I'm Sorry Steve_.”

He sounds so broken, and Steve reacts to it as he's reacted to it since they were kids, sinking down and putting his arms around Bucky, pulling his back up against his chest. Bucky fidgets, and Steve's right shoulder burns with pain, but Steve holds on.

Bucky looks at him then, his eyes full of a horrified self-loathing, of the fear of imminent rejection.

Then Steve's glance moves downwards, and he sees the blood all over the lower half of Bucky's face.

Bucky blushes and ducks his head away. “I bit seven shades of shit out of your shoulder. I'm sorry. I dunno why I did it. I sorta... lost my mind. I've never, when I was--” He gestures, _when I was the Soldier_. “I didn't even know I _could_. That part of me isn't built for.... _pleasure._ ” The last word is apologetic, barely above a whisper.

He fidgets some more, and nearly fights his way out of Steve's embrace before slumping in defeat. “And _I_ should be comforting _you_. Can't even get that right.”

“Buck...” Steve starts.

“No,” Bucky says, shaking his head.

“But--”

Bucky cuts him off again, pleading. “Whatever it is, please don't say it.”

Steve hugs Bucky a little harder, and buries his face in the crook of Bucky's neck. “I just had an orgasm so powerful I blacked out.”

Bucky doesn't say anything, just puts his hand over Steve's where they are clasped around his chest, and squeezes. “Okay,” he whispers. “Okay.”

“Yeah, it was,” Steve whispers back.

Bucky doesn't say anything for a few ragged breaths, then he turns to look at Steve, his eyes shining like mirrors, pale and huge and wet with tears. “I love you,” he says.

 

* * *

 

Tony is twitchy, jumpy. Stressed with how close the mission had skated to _complete fucking disaster_. Still all knotted up inside about thinking they really had lost Cap when the building went down. How Bruce was curled up into a little ball, shivering his way into his post-Hulk depressive spiral. All he wants from life is to go home _right_ _now_ , and the quinjet won't be there for another three hours. Three more hours to spend in Siberia, next to a smoking and probably radioactive crater. Three hours of nothing to do where the team will have to pretend to like him and make small talk with him. He can see them gathered in a couple groups a short distance away. _They're deciding who has to go make nice with the money guy next_ , says his anxiety.

And so when he sees Steve limping up the hill hand in hand with My Little Murderpony, both of them clearly angling to avoid Tony, he maybe lashes out a little bit. “So where have you two been?” he grumbles.

Sam, who must have pulled the short straw and was walking over to Tony, just rolls his eyes. Steve's got his shield on his back but Sam can see what looks like hickeys on his neck and-- okay, some marks that have gone way, _way_ beyond “love bite” territory and... Sam sighs. He used to have a Captain America  & the Howling Commandos trapper-keeper, not that he'd ever admit it to any of these fools. And thinking about it, he wonders whether it was really worth saving the world from aliens, if in reward all he got was this _cannot unsee_ shit about Captain America's freaky Cannibal Holocaust sex life with his pet cyborg assassin.

Sam's gonna get Barnes back for ruining his childhood, so he whispers to Tony, “Argh. Fucking. The answer is fucking. Clearly. Look at them.”

Steve turns the colour of the mayonnaise in his mom's beetroot salad. Sam knows he's right, but Steve blushing an impressive shade of crimson confirms it.

So Sam expects and is prepared when Barnes raises his head to give him his best murder eyes. What he does not expect is the fresh blood all over the lower half of Barnes' face. Which, nope. Sam turns around and heads back to the snowmobiles. He'd found the bourbon earlier, and was real proud of himself for not cracking it open when he had a head wound, but there comes a time when a man needs to re-examine his priorities in life and Samuel Wilson has just reached it.

Natasha clears her throat, looks at the Soldier, and makes a little circular motion near her mouth.

The Soldier grunts and scoops up snow in his flesh hand, his eyes never leaving the Avengers. He rubs the snow over the bloody parts of his face, then wipes the dampness on his sleeve. It leaves a pinkish smear on the arctic-white of the tac jacket.

“Is he--” Tony starts, indicating the Soldier, but looking at Steve.

Steve puts his hands out. “On his way back. Give him a few minutes.”

“I never left,” the Soldier grumbles under his breath. Then he turns his attention to Thor. “Pal, your axe is down there. It's a great weapon, and I'm _this_ close to giving it a name, but I think it misses its home. And more voices in my head probably isn't a good idea.”

Thor looks mildly surprised. “Asgardian weapons don't normally talk to humans,” he says.

“Or whatever the fuck I am,” mutters the Soldier as he walks off into the woods.

“Is he okay?” Tony whispers to Steve. “Because I'm not sure I want to spend six hours in a quinjet with _that_ right now.”

“You're about to spend six hours on a quinjet with a guy who turns into a giant green rage monster.” says Bruce.

“...fair point,” says Tony. “So what's a feral assassin with dissociative issues, between friends.” He touches Bruce on the upper arm. “Also, that reminds me, your tranquilisers would work on him--”

“No. Terrible idea,” says Steve.

“--if it becomes a life or death situation,” says Tony, his emphasis on _life or death_ crystal clear.

“Dude,” Clint sighs. “He tracked the aliens here which, by the way, really fucking impressive? And then singlehandedly wiped out the queen and her nest. He's allowed to be a little weird afterwards. Plus, shit, I'd _definitely_ get weird if my weapons started talking to me in the middle of a battle, _Thor_.”

Thor looks abashed, moving his big hands around as if to mould the right words out of air with them. “I didn't think to mention it to him.” He glances down the hill, towads the guardhouse. “I should retrieve the axe. Would you like to come with me, friends? Perhaps it is feeling talkative.”

“Ooh! Maybe it will talk to me!” hums Clint excitedly.

(Natasha rolls her eyes. If the axe talks to anyone, it would _clearly_ be her.)

Tony's face changes gears, the stress of dealing with humans fading away to be replaced by the furrow caused by a really interesting engineering issue. “How does it choose who to talk to?” he muses. “Is it some sort of neural-wavelength matching? Because that might explain why Murderbot got along with it, since he is on a _completely_ different wavelength--”

“Oh man, you want to hear about dudes on a different wavelength?” smiles Clint. “I trained with this Lurp, y'know, long-range recon in Vietnam. Now _that_ guy, you wanna talk about _weird_ \--”

Steve watches the four of them – Thor, Tony, Clint and Natasha – head down the hill chattering away to each other. As their voices begin to distort with the distance and the slope, he turns to the forest to go after Bucky.

Steve halts when he feels a hand on his arm. “Steve,” Bruce says. “You okay?”

He smiles at Bruce wearily. “Yeah.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

Bruce fidgets, and opens his mouth a couple times, trying to decide how to begin. “With me, I... if someone asked me which side of me I'd keep, if I could? I'd get rid of the Other Guy. Wouldn't even have to think about it.” He looks up at Steve. “What do you think James would answer, if somebody asked him the same question?”

Steve exhaled, long and low, and smiled to himself. “I've already asked him that, more or less. I suggested he could stop being the Winter Soldier. He looked... shocked. Like I was asking him to stop existing.”

“There. You have your answer then,” Bruce says. “And, apologies again if this is too direct a question, but which one do you love? The boy, or the soldier?”

“...He'd tell you they're the same,” Steve responds. These are thoughts he's barely sorted out himself, things he keeps shoving back into the closets of his mind for sorting through at a later date. But it's Bruce, and Bruce so infrequently talks about himself that Steve can't find it in him to shut down Bruce's questions.

“Of course. It's a spectrum. But both he and I tend to spend our time at one side of it, or the other,” Bruce says.

“I love both of him. All of him.” Steve kicks at the snow.

Bruce just waits, his rumpled face turned upwards. The question remaining, in the wrinkles in his brow. And Steve thinks about what happened in the guardhouse. What he'd asked for. Who he'd wanted, with a passion that had left him barely able to stand.

“I'm in love with the Winter Soldier,” Steve whispers.

Bruce nods. “Then... I won't say everything will be okay. But you can make it work. You're in love with who he is, not with his alias. People like us are difficult to love.” Bruce smiles. “I see the two of you and... it gives me hope. That someone could at least be... fond of... all of me.” He fiddles with his glasses. “Of course it would help if I was fond of all of me.”

Steve hugs him, telegraphing the move and giving Bruce plenty of time to back away. “There is hope, Bruce. There is always hope. And you deserve it more than anyone,” Steve says, softly.

Bruce smiles, but fidgets slightly against his chest. “Um.”

Steve loosens his embrace and steps away from Bruce. “Less touching?”

“Yes. Sorry,” Bruce says, blushing and staring at his feet.

“He gets flinchy, too,” Steve says.

Bruce's body language is still closed off, arms at his sides, trying to make himself as small as possible. “You should tell him. How you feel. Often. For people like us, it's hard to believe you deserve to be loved as you are... especially when what you are is so different from... normal. The world likes to make you feel like you don't belong.”

Steve nods, and he remembers the shame in Bucky's eyes after they had sex in the guardhouse. Remembers the way he still hides his mission-self from Steve, as if the Winter Soldier is his dirty secret. As if Steve will stop loving him if he sees what Bucky is really like, when that's precisely who Steve fell in love with – not the callow Brooklyn lad of their youth, but the man who returned from a 70-year private war, wicked and dangerous like a knife with no handle. He will help Bucky realise he's okay like he is – not _perfect_ , none of them are, but brilliant and unique, a one-off masterpiece. He'll find a way to tell Bucky, to make him see, once they got back to New York.

 

* * *

Sam has organised himself a nice, insulated, waterproof blanket to sit on, some headphones to keep his ears warm and bathe them in the sounds of Wilson Pickett, a tree to lean against, and a nice bottle of bourbon. He tugs his gloves off to unscrew the bottle cap, swearing at the cold the entire time. Seriously. Why can't the bad guys ever crash-land in Jamaica? Or have their super-secret bases in Tahiti?

He's just about to take the first sip of that sweet, sweet Kentucky firewater when a metal hand snakes around the tree and snatches the bottle away.

“Motherfucker, what--”

Then there's a tap on his other shoulder and a gloved human hand extends a pack of Marlboro Reds towards him.

“I don't smoke. I do, however, really want a drink,” Sam growls.

Then he remembers how shitty the past couple days have been. “Actually, fuck it. Gimme a coffin nail.”

The Soldier passes him a cigarette and a battered zippo. Sam lights up. There would be the sound of 250-odd pounds of asshole cyborg supersoldier settling down against the other side of the tree trunk _if the motherfucker ever made any noise_ and, a moment later, the bottle of bourbon is handed back.

“Didn't know you smoked,” Sam says.

“Can't, when I'm tracking. Can't even have the cigs on me, they smell so much. But now? Now I just wanna get the stench of dead alien off me.”

“They do anything for you?”

“Nope.” And Sam can hear the damn grin, even though he can't see it. “Just panders to my oral fixation.”

“Man, shut the hell up.”

The metal hand slips back and grabs the bourbon again. “Steve says you're a therapist, at the VA.”

That is not what Sam had been expecting. “...yeah.,” he says. “A counselor. Helping vets adjust to civilian life again.”

“Okay. I, uh...” There's the sound of more of Sam's precious whisky going down the throat of someone who probably can't get drunk. Sam waits for the Soldier to say whatever he was going to say, and eventually the man finishes, in a voice like old sandpaper, “That's a good thing to do.”

Sam's no fool. He knows the wary pattern of a vet circling his problems, debating whether to step forwards and ask for help. He _usually_ knows how to nudge someone like that _juust_ right, so the step becomes easier, the reception more certain. But who the hell was there at the VA that could deal with what Barnes went through?

And it's not like he could go into group, sitting around sharing experiences and coping mechanisms. Especially because as far as Sam could tell, the Soldier's main way of dealing with shit that he can't handle is to book himself a nice all-expenses-paid murder vacation: go to interesting new places, look through a scope at influential people, and kill them. Bad people, but still. The VA doesn't really condone homicide as a coping mechanism. Plus, was he even legal? The VA was also not thrilled with harboring known fugitives with triple-digit body counts, even if he did punch out a dinosaur.

So Sam decides to leave that for a while, and turn it over in his head when he wasn't freezing cold and covered with bits of dead alien. Instead Sam says, “hey, that bourbon doesn't affect you, either, does it?”

“Nope.”

“So you gonna give me the bottle back?”

“Nope.”

“Aw man, _fuck you_.”

Bucky raises the bottle in salute, middle finger extended.

 

* * *

 

Things would have been fine, if Clint Barton had remembered to check his pockets before doing laundry when they got back from New York.

But he didn't, because the pizza guy arrived, and a man who doesn't have a Sal's finest with extra pepperoni at the top of his priority list is not a man Clint Barton ever wants to be.

The smoke grenade goes off somewhere in the middle of the spin cycle, destroying his washer-dryer and getting dirty, stinky water all over the building's laundry room.

Clint groans, grabs a six-pack of Brooklyn Lager, tucks the pizza box under his arm, and hauls his other three loads of laundry plus all the wet, smoky clothes from the busted load down to the local laundromat. (So he hates doing laundry. And dishes. Sue him.) He settles down with his beer and resigns himself to an afternoon watching the washing machines spin and reading the laundromat's collection of one-month-old Spanish gossip magazines.

So far, so shitty, but the busted washing machine wasn't the big problem.

Clint didn't discover what the big problem was, in fact, until Nat broke into his apartment after dinner, furious that he hadn't been returning her calls.

His eyes widen. “...because my phone's still at the laundromat. Oh, shit.”

Except it wasn't.

They just about tear the place apart looking for it. Natasha checks behind machines, and Mrs Kwan, the owner, looks four times in the Lost & Found box and in her office desk, in case someone turned it in. She shrugs and says she'll keep an eye out for it, but it's Bed-Stuy, and the phone was brand new, so it's probably long gone.

“Well,” Natasha sighs. “It's a StarkPhone, so at least when you set up your access code, it encrypted everything.”

“Uh,” Clint says.

Natasha facepalms. “Clint. Do you have anything on there more incriminating than 400 photos of Lucky rolling around on his back?”

“Um,” Clint says.

“ _Clint_.”

“...three photos of Cap and the Soldier getting freaky?”

“Jesus,” Natasha groans. “We're all going to die.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Chapter title song.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8DekFFCE5c) I strongly recommend playing this song extra loud on headphones on your preferred method of public transport, while glaring at people and pretending to be a replicant from _Blade Runner_. (If you like dark Synthwave, [lo, I have an entire playlist of it and associated horror-movie sample music here](https://open.spotify.com/user/alexdecampi/playlist/5Am3npqLGXMlJYcEhOOnVc) on Spotify).
> 
> I... am sorry this took so goddamn long? My world fell apart at the end of last year. Just... so much work I nearly had a nervous breakdown, plus family stuff, plus moving to a new city. I have felt Much Guilt about not being prompter with updates, especially as this chapter has been 2/3 written almost forever. (Further chapters also have quite a lot written, so fret not, it won't be such a long wait hereafter.)
> 
> As always, your comments give me life, so please consider leaving one!
> 
> I'm still slowly updating my erotic novel _Heartbreak Incorporated_ , too. 10 chapters. [Free to read, here.](https://www.wattpad.com/story/81593275-heartbreak-incorporated)
> 
> Also, well, my hand slipped and I accidentally signed up for the Stucky Big Bang this year again. ([Lucky Seven](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7033105/chapters/16002481), my fic for last year's Big Bang, ended up being one of the more popular ones.) So stay tuned for the summer.... I'll be writing a medieval / Hundred Years War no powers AU called _[TITLE REDACTED UNTIL ARTIST CLAIMS ARE FINISHED]_. If you like hot dudes in armour, historical accuracy, thriller plots and lots of angst and sexual tension, well, HELLO, come sit next to me.
> 
> (In general, if you are thinking of writing or occasionally write fic, you should do the SBB. It's a really wonderful experience and everyone - mods, artists, readers - are super supportive. [Details here.](https://thestuckylibrary.tumblr.com))
> 
> Oh, and somewhere between the last chapter of this being posted and the current one, I wrote an identity porn fic that's basically 90%, well, porn. It's called Happy Accidents and if that's your jam, you can find it if you click on my username, you wonderful smuthounds.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Humans Are Such Easy Prey](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11202351) by [dracusfyre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dracusfyre/pseuds/dracusfyre)




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